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ST MICHAEL'S COLLEGE

TORONTO, CANADA

LIBRARY

The Un

PRESENTED BY

iversity of Toronto Library

PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION
IN THE MIDDLE AGES

LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD

Oxford University Press

LOUIS CLARK VANUXEM FOUNDATION

PHILOSOPHY

AND CIVILIZATION IN

THE MIDDLE AGES

BY
MAURICE DEWULF

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LOUVAIN

AND IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
MEMBER OF ACADEMIES OF BRUSSELS AND OF MADRID

PRINCETON

Princeton University Press
1922

PUBLISHED, 1922
REPRINTED, 1924

MAR 1 0 1953

The Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.A.

PREFACE

THE material of these lectures, which I had the
honor of delivering at Princeton University, on the
Vanuxem Foundation, was prepared, during the
War, at the Universities of Harvard, Poitiers, and
Toronto. Certain portions of the work, relatively
few, have already appeared in the form of articles,
viz. : part of Chapter I in the Revue de Metaphys-
ique et de Morale, July, 1918; Chapter IV, ii, in
the Philosophical Review, July, 1918; Chapter V,
iii, in the International Journal of Ethics, January,
1919; Chapter III, ii, and Chapter VII, i-v, in the
Harvard Theological Review, October, 1918.
These now take their place as integral parts of
what may be regarded as a supplement to my His
tory of Mediaeval Philosophy.

The purpose of the study as here presented is to
approach the Middle Ages from a new point of
view, by showing how the thought of the period,
metaphysics included, is intimately connected with
the whole round of Western civilization to which it
belongs. My work represents simply an attempt
to open the way ; it makes no pretense to exhaustive
treatment of any of the innumerable problems in
volved in so vast a subject.

I desire to express my cordial thanks to the
friends who have aided me in translating these lee-

VI PREFACE

tures, in particular to Mr. Daniel Sargent, of Har
vard University. And it is a special duty and
pleasure to acknowledge my obligations to Profes
sor Horace C. Longwell, of Princeton University,
who has offered many valuable suggestions while
assisting in the revision of the manuscript and in
the task of seeing the work through the press.

Harvard University
January, 1922

ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

i. Relational aspects of philosophy in the Middle Ages. ii.
Methods, iii. The importance of the twelfth century and
of the thirteenth century in mediaeval civilization, iv. Sur
vey of these centuries.

CHAPTER TWO

SURVEY OF CIVILIZATION IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY

i. Feudal Europe, ii. Catholic influences: Cluny, Citeaux,
the bishops, the Pope. iii. A new spirit: the value and
dignity of the individual man. iv. New forms of art. v. The
twelfth century one of French influences.

CHAPTER THREE

THE CIVILIZATION AS REFLECTED IN PHILOSOPHY

i. Location of philosophical schools; invasion of French
schools by foreigners, ii. Delimitation of the several sci
ences; philosophy distinct from the seven liberal arts and
from theology, iii. Harmony of the feudal sense of personal
worth with the philosophical doctrine that the individual
alone exists, iv. The feudal civilization and the anti-realistic
solution of the problem of universals.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE GREAT AWAKENING OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE
THIRTEENTH CENTURY

i. The causes: The acquired momentum, ii. The rise of the
Universities (Paris and Oxford), iii. The establishment of
the mendicant orders (Dominicans and Franciscans), iv.
The acquaintance with new philosophical works; translations.
v. General result: among the numerous systems the schol
astic philosophy issues as dominant, vi. The comprehensive
classification of knowledge.

Vlll CONTEXTS

CHAPTER FIVE

UNIFYING AND COSMOPOLITAN TENDENCIES

i. Need of universality; the "law of parsimony." ii. Excess
resulting from the felt need of simplifying without limit;
the geocentric system and the anthropocentric conception,
iii. The society of mankind ("universitas humana") in its
theoretical and practical forms, iv. Cosmopolitan tenden
cies.

CHAPTER SIX

OPTIMISM AND IMPERSONALITY

i. Optimism in philosophy, in art, in religion, ii. Imperson
ality, iii. History of philosophy and literary attribution,
iv. Perenniality.

CHAPTER SEVEN

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY AND THE RELIGIOUS SPIRIT
i. Common definition of scholastic philosophy as a religious
philosophy, ii. Reflective analysis of the distinction between
philosophy and theology, iii. The religious spirit of the
epoch, iv. Connections of philosophy with religion not af
fecting the integrity of the former, v. Subordination of phi
losophy to Catholic theology in the light of this analysis, vi.
Solution and adjustment of the problem, vii. Influences of
philosophy in other fields. Conclusion.

CHAPTER EIGHT

INTELLECTUALISM

i. Intellectualism in ideology, ii. In epistemology. iii. In
psychology (free volition), iv. More generally (psychology,
logic, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics), v. In other forms of
culture.

CHAPTER NINE

A PLURALISTIC CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD

i. What metaphysics is. ii. Static aspects of reality, iii.
Dynamic aspects; the central doctrine of act and potency,
iv. Application to substance and accident; to matter and
form. v. The problem of individuation. vi. Human per
sonality, vii. God: as pure existence.

CONTENTS IX

CHAPTER TEN

INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY

i. Social theory the last addition to scholastic philosophy,
ii. Fundamental principle: the group exists for its mem
bers, and not conversely, iii. Ethical foundation of this
principle, iv. The idea of the group in the teaching of can
onists and jurists, v. Metaphysical basis: the group not an
entity outside of its members, vi. Comparison of the group
with the human body. vii. Conclusion.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE THEORY OF THE STATE

i. Sovereignty from God. ii. It is a function; morality of
governors not different from that of the governed; what
the function implies, iii. Sovereignty resides in the people
who delegate it. iv. The best form of government according
to the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, v. Making of laws
the essential attribute of sovereignty: natural law and hu
man law. vi. This form of government compared with the
European states of the thirteenth century; with the modern
nationalities; with the theories of preceding centuries.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PROGRESS

i. The constant and the permanent, ii. Progress in science,
in morals, in social and political justice, in civilization.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

PHILOSOPHY AND NATIONAL TEMPERAMENT IN THE

THIRTEENTH CENTURY

i. Scholastic philosophy reflected in the temperament of the
peoples who created it. ii. Three main doctrines: the value
of the individual; intellectualism ; moderation, iii. Schol
astic philosophy the product of Neo-Latin and Anglo-Celtic
minds; Germanic contribution virtually negligible, iv. Latin
Averroism in the thirteenth century, v. The lure of Neo-
Platonism to the German, vi. The chief doctrines opposed
to the scholastic tendencies: lack of clearness; inclination to
pantheism; deductive method A outrance; absence of moder
ation.

X CONTENTS

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

EPILOGUE

i. Influence of thirteenth century philosophical systems on
later thought in the West. ii. Pedagogical value of scholasti
cism for the history of modern philosophy.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX OF NAMES

PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION
IN THE MIDDLE AGES

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

i. Relational aspects of philosophy in the Middle Ages. ii.
Methods, iii. The importance of the twelfth century and of
the thirteenth century in mediaeval civilization, iv. Survey
of these centuries.

THE study of mediaeval philosophy has undergone
considerable change in recent years, and the de
velopments in this field of research have been im
portant. On all sides the soil has been turned, and
just as in archaeological excavation, as at Pompeii
or at Timgad, here too discoveries unexpectedly
rich are rewarding our search. For such men as
John Scotus Eriugena, Anselm of Canterbury,
Abaelard, Hugo of St. Victor, John of Salisbury,
Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, Albert the
Great, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Siger of
Brabant, Thierry of Freiburg, Roger Bacon, Wil
liam of Occam, — these are truly thinkers of the
first order, and their labours are worthy of the
notable studies now increasingly made of them.

2 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

There is, further, a host of other philosophers whose
thought has been unveiled, and whose significance
will become the more clear as historical research
progresses.

The study of mediaeval philosophy, however, has
heretofore contented itself chiefly with establishing
actual doctrines, and with indicating their develop
ment or the connection between one philosopher
and another, while little attention has been given
to the historical setting of these doctrines in the
mediaeval civilization itself. But in the throbbing
vitality of a civilization there is an interdependence
of the numerous and complex elements constituting
it; such, for example, are the economic well-being,
the family and social institutions, the political and
juridical systems, the moral and religious and aes
thetic aspirations, the scientific and philosophical
conceptions, the feeling for progress in human de
velopment. The interdependence of these various
momenta is perhaps more readily apparent in the
realms of economics and politics and art, but it is to
be found also in the operation of the intellectual
and moral factors.

It might seem at first sight that philosophy would
enjoy a certain immunity from the vicissitudes of
temporal change, because of the problems with
which it deals; but closer view reveals that it too
is caught inevitably within the meshes of the tem
poral net. For the work of Plato or of Aristotle,
this is admitted as a commonplace by the historians

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 3

of philosophy; the thought of these philosophers
reflects the conditions of the Athenian society of
their day. Similarly, no one pretends to arrive at
a proper understanding of such thinkers as Francis
Bacon and Hobbes except in the light of the politi
cal and economic and the broadly cultural condi
tions of their age. Just so in our study of
mediaeval philosophy, we may not properly con
sider Anselm, or Thomas Aquinas, or William
of Occam as men whose thoughts float free without
anchorage. They too are the sons of their age.
Nay more, there is a certain philosophical atmo
sphere which is created by the collective thought
of numerous thinkers; and this is subject to influ
ences issuing from the spirit of the age, in its eco
nomic, political, social, moral, religious and artistic
aspects. Moreover, while philosophical thought
is thus affected from without, it also exerts its own
influence in turn upon the general culture with
which it is organically connected.

For the thought of the Middle Ages the time has
come when we must take account of this mutual
dependence. Indeed we may even regard with ad
vantage the example of natural history, whose mu
seums no longer exhibit their specimens as so many
lifeless objects in a bare cage, — on the contrary,
they are represented as if they were still alive in
their native jungle.

The point of view, therefore, which we choose
for our treatment in these lectures, is that of the

4 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

relational aspects in mediaeval philosophy — a study
which relates the philosophy to the other factors in
that civilization taken as an organic whole. We
shall be concerned therefore less with isolated per
sonalities than with the general philosophical mind
of the age, its way of conceiving life and reality.

Before indicating the chronological limits and the
general outline of our study, it is of paramount
importance to examine a question of method which
confronts us at the outset, the right solution of
which is of great consequence: — Just how may we
understand the mediaeval civilization in order to
judge it aright?

To understand the mediaeval civilization, — to
penetrate into its very spirit — we must first of all
avoid forcing parallels with the mentality and cus
toms of our own age. Many a study has been
marred because its author was unable to resist this
temptation. Mediaeval civilization is not the same
as that of our own age. Its factors have a differ
ent meaning; they were made for men of a differ
ent age. Charlemagne's famous sword can now be
wielded only with great difficulty, and the heavy
armor of the iron-mailed knights no longer suits
the needs of our twentieth-century soldiers. Nor is
it otherwise with the mediaeval civilization consid
ered as a whole; it is not fitted to our own con
ditions.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 5

Further, in order to understand the Middle Ages,
we must think directly after their manner of think
ing. When a beginner commences the study of a
foreign language, he is invariably advised to think
directly in that language, instead of painfully trans
lating words and phrases from his native tongue.
Just so a right study of the civilization of the Mid
dle Ages must take it in and for itself, in its in
ternal elements and structure; it must be under
stood from within. To this end each factor must
be separately considered and defined, — in itself
and also with due regard to the particular signifi
cance attaching to it at any given epoch.

Furthermore, the several factors that make up
a civilization should be collectively examined and
viewed as a coherent whole ; for only so is its unique
harmony revealed. Such a harmony varies from
one period to another. Therefore, we should vio
late the most elementary principles of historical
criticism, if we were to predicate of the fifteenth
century truths which apply only to the twelfth and
the thirteenth centuries; or to attribute to forma
tive periods such as the tenth and the eleventh cen
turies what is evidenced only in the central period
of the Middle Ages.

If the above principles of internal criticism are
necessary in discerning the spirit of mediaeval civi
lization, they are no less indispensable for arriving
at a just estimate of that spirit. While this civili
zation is different from our own, it is not to be

6 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

judged as either worse or better. To determine its
worth we must not compare its institutions with
those of to-day. It is positively distressing to see
historians, under the spell of special sympathies,
proclaim the thirteenth century the best of all cen
turies of human history and prefer its institutions
to our own. Such laudatores temporis acti really
injure the cause which they intend to serve. But it
is equally distressing to see others, more numerous,
decry thirteenth-century civilization, and strenu
ously declaim against the imprudent dreamer who
would carry certain of its ideas and customs into
our modern world. To go back to the Middle Ages
is out of the question; retrogression is impossible,
for the past will ever be the past. To prefer to our
railways, for instance, the long and perilous
horseback rides of that age is of course absurd;
but in the same way, to depreciate the Middle
Ages by contrasting them at all with our modern
ways of living, thinking, or feeling seems to me
meaningless.

This would be tantamount to reviving the errors
of the Renaissance, which was infatuated with its
own world and disdained everything mediaeval.1
This error has been strangely persistent, and it
merits examination because of the lessons entailed.
Disdain for the past begot ignorance, ignorance be-

i The very name "Middle Ages" was disparaging; it implied an in
termediary stage, parenthetical, with no value saving that of con
nection between antiquity and modern times.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 7

got injustice, injustice begot prejudice. Being un
able or unwilling to go back to thirteenth-century
documents, the critics of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries judged the whole period by reference to
late and decadent scholasticism; the golden age was
thus involved in the condemnation deserved only by
the age of decadence. The historians of the eight
eenth century, and of the beginning of the nine
teenth century, inherited the estimate thus erron
eously made by the men of the Renaissance and the
Reformation; they accepted it uncritically and
passed on the error unchanged. That, in brief, is
the story of the perpetuation of the reproach at
taching to the Middle Ages.2

A singular instance of the loss involved in thus
failing to appreciate the merits of the past is the
contempt which was professed for the "Gothic"
architecture, — both because of its mediaeval origin
and because the term came to be synonymous with
"barbaric." One can understand, to be sure, how
through ignorance or routine or education cul
tured minds in the Renaissance period might refuse
to open dusty manuscripts and bulky folios; their
preference for humanistic works, — such as those of
Vives or of Agricola or of Nizolius or of others even
more superficial — to the dry subtleties of the con
temporary "terminists" is perfectly intelligible.
But it is inconceivable to us how the great cathe-

2 Cf. my Histoire de la Philosophie M6d\6vale, Louvain, 1912, p.
106.

8 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

drals of Paris, Rheims, Amiens, Chartres, Cologne,
and Strasbourg failed to find favour with men of
cultivated taste, and how they could have been in
cluded in the general condemnation of things me
diaeval. For, those wonders in stone were not hid
den in the recesses of library cases. On the con
trary, they raised high above the cities their spires,
their arches, their silhouettes, — and, indeed, as an
heroic protest against the injustice of men. That
a revival of Greek architecture might have aroused
enthusiasm is easily intelligible ; but it is hard to un
derstand how Montesquieu, Fenelon, Goethe, who
passed daily such Gothic cathedrals, could turn
away from them and speak of them disparagingly
and even refuse to cross their thresholds, — being, as
they said, the remnants of a decadent age. Goethe's
confession on this point is significant indeed. He
tells us how at the beginning of his stay at Stras
bourg, he was wont to pass the cathedral with in
difference ; but one day he entered, and as he did so
his eyes were fascinated with a beauty which he
had not before seen; thereafter, not only did he
give up his prejudices against Gothic art, but he be
came enamoured of the beautiful cathedral that
raises its red-brown spires above the plains of
Alsace. "Educated among the detractors of Gothic
architecture," he writes, "I nourished my antipathy
against these overloaded, complicated ornaments,
which gave the effect of gloomy religion by their
verv odditv. . . . But here I seemed suddenly to

IX THE MIDDLE AGES 9

see a new revelation; what had been objectionable
appeared admirable, and the reverse, — the percep
tion of beauty in all its attractiveness, was im
pressed on my soul."3

The discredit in which mediaeval art was held
has now definitely yielded to a more just estimate.
Romanesque and Gothic architecture are now uni
versally acknowledged to be things of beauty in
and for themselves; certainly, in any case, without
reference to the architecture of the twentieth cen
tury. Again, we acknowledge the merit of Giotto's
frescoes, of the translucent stained glass of Char-
tres, without estimating them by modern standards
of painting.

Similarly, no one today would commit himself
to the prejudice, also not so old, that before Rous
seau nature was not understood and that the thir
teenth century was ignorant of its beauty. All of
those who are familiar with the sculpture of the
cathedrals and with illuminated manuscripts, or
who have read the Divine Comedy of Dante and
the poems of St. Francis, know how unjust that re
proach is; and they never compare the thirteenth-
century interpretation of nature with that of our
modern writers.

This marked contrast, between our appreciation
of mediaeval art and the condemnation of it in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, indicates the
canons to which we should adhere in reaching a just

s Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit, Buch IX, Teil 2.

10 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

judgement of the past. Plainly, in order to under
stand the value of things mediaeval, we must have
recourse to a standard other than that set by the
conditions of our own time. For, what is true of
art is also true of all other factors in a civilization.
If, then, we are to estimate aright the civilization
of the thirteenth century, we must refer it to a
fixed norm: the dignity and the worth of human
nature. This will be readily granted by all who be
lieve that human nature remains essentially the
same, in spite of historical changes; and of course
this was the common mediaeval doctrine.4 By this
standard a civilization stands high when it achieves
its own intense and coordinated expression of the
essential aspirations of the individual and the col
lective life ; when it realizes, in addition, an adequate
degree of material welfare; when it rests also on a
rational organization of the family, the state, and
other groups; when it allows, further, for full de
velopment in philosophy, science and art; and
when its morality and its religion foster their ideals
on a basis of noble sentiments and refined emotions.
In this sense the civilization of the thirteenth cen
tury must be counted among those that have suc
ceeded in attaining to a high degree of perfection;
for, certain unique functions and aspirations of
humanity are therein revealed, and indeed in rare
and striking form. Hence it furnishes us with
documents of the first importance for our under-

* See ch. XII, i.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 11

standing of humanity; and for this reason it may
instruct our present generation as it surely can all
those to come. Homo sum, nil Tiumani a me alie-
num puto.

From this point of view, and from this alone,
may we properly call good or bad — let us not say
better or worse — certain elements in our heritage
from the Middle Ages. The praise or the blame
which may be given to things mediaeval in these
lectures will not proceed from a comparison of me
diaeval conditions with those of our own age, but
rather by reference to their harmony, or lack of it,
with the essential nobility of human nature. We
may speak then of things good and beautiful
achieved by the Middle Ages; for they are human
realities, even though they are enveloped within the
historical past. The Fioretti of St. Francis, the
Divine Comedy of Dante, the cathedrals, the feudal
virtues, these are all sparks of the human soul,
scintillae animae, whose lustre cannot be obscured;
they have their message for all of humanity. And
if certain doctrines in scholastic philosophy have
maintained their value, as have certain doctrines of
Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Descartes, Leibnitz,
and others, this must be because they have a deeply
human meaning which remains everlastingly true.

Within these limits it would be neither proper
nor possible to abstain from praise and criticism.
For, the historian is no mere registering machine,
unmoved by love and hatred. On the contrary, he

12 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

cannot be indifferent to good and evil, to progress
and decline, to lofty aspirations and social evils;
therefore, he cannot refrain from approving and
condemning.

Ill

This method of historical reconstruction and ap
preciation is especially necessary in studying the
twelfth and the thirteenth centuries, — perhaps
more so than for any other mediaeval period. To
this period, as the very heart of the Middle Ages,
we shall limit our study, and for certain reasons
which we may now consider.

First of all, this is the period when mediaeval
civilization assumes definite form, with outlines and
features that characterize a unique age in the life
of humanity.

Before the end of the eleventh century, the me
diaeval temperament is not yet formed; it is only
in process of elaboration. The new races, Celts
and Teutons5 (the Teutons including more espe
cially Angles, Danes, Saxons, Franks, Germans,
and Normans) had passively received something of
the culture of the Graeco-Roman world, certain ele
ments of organization, juridical and political, and
some fragmentary scientific and philosophical ideas.
During the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries,
these new races react upon what they have received

s The terms Teuton and German are sometimes employed in the
inverse sense; but I prefer the usage above indicated.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 13

and subject everything to an elaboration of their
own. They apply themselves to it, with their vir
tues and their defects; and the outcome begets the
new order of things. Christianity directs the whole
work, — and it is not a light task to soften the rough
mentality of the barbarians. The work is nearly
completed at the dawn of the twelfth century, and
the period of groping is over. Thus there are
three factors in the process of forming the me
diaeval civilization: the heritage from the ancient
world, the reactive response of the new races, and
the directing guidance of Christianity.

With the twelfth century the results of this long
and gradual process of formation begin to appear.
This is the springtime period. And just as the
springtime of nature excludes no plant from her
call to life, so the springtime of civilization buds
forth in every branch of human activity; political,
economic, family and social regime, morals, reli
gion, fine arts, sciences, philosophy, — all of those
sublime emanations of the human soul which form
a civilization, and determine its progress, now re
veal their abounding vitality and burst forth in
bloom. Of these factors, the political organization
ripens first, very naturally, while philosophy comes
to its maturity the last of all. The former is, as it
were, the body; the latter belongs to the com
plex psychic life. And since civilization is essen
tially the expression of psychic forces, the real
mediaeval man must be sought for in his religious

14 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

feelings, his moral aspirations, his artistic work,
his philosophical and scientific activities.

With the thirteenth century we reach definitely
the climax of the development, — that is, the period
of maturity. At this stage the total complex of
the mediaeval civilization reveals its striking and
compelling features.

A second reason exists for concentrating our at
tention upon the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
These are also the centuries in which the philo
sophical temperament of the Occident is definitely
formed.

All historians agree in ascribing to the French
genius the leadership of the world during this
period. It was in France that the feudal mind was
formed. A moral, artistic, and religious tradition
began to appear on the soil of French provinces.
Chivalry, feudalism, the Benedictine organization,
monastic and religious reforms, Romanesque and
Gothic art are just so many products born of the
French temperament ; and these spread throughout
the whole western world by virtue of the current
travel and trade, the Crusades and the migrations
of religious orders. From France the ideas of the
new civilization spread over the neighboring coun
tries, like sparks from a blazing fire. The twelfth
and the thirteenth centuries were centuries of
French thought ; and this leadership of France was
retained until the Hundred Years War. Natural
ly, therefore, the same leadership was maintained
in the field of philosophy, as we shall see.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 15

Moreover, the thirteenth century is the period
when both the Neo-Latin and the Anglo-Celtic
minds distinguished themselves clearly from the
Germanic type. If one seeks the origin of the dif
ference in mentality found in the nations of the
West, one is forced inevitably back to the thir
teenth century. This century witnessed the for
mation of the great European nations, the dawn of
a more definite conception of patria, the decisive
outlining of the ethnical features of the peoples
who were henceforth to fill history with their al
liances and rivalries. The thirteenth century is
characterized by unifying and cosmopolitan tenden
cies; but, at the same time, it constitutes a great
plateau whence are beginning to issue the various
channels which will later run as mighty rivers in
different and even opposite directions. Many
peculiarities in the mediaeval way of conceiving
individual and social life and many of their philo
sophical conceptions of the world have entered in
to the modern views; and, indeed, many doctrines
which are now opposed to each other can be traced
to their origin in the thirteenth century.

IV \j

We may now outline broadly the plan of these
lectures. From the general point of view, the
twelfth century is perhaps of more decisive im
portance. But from the philosophical standpoint
the thirteenth century is supreme, and therefore it
will demand more of our time and attention. This

16 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

difference is due to the fact that civilization alwavs

develops more rapidly than philosophy, the latter
being a tender fruit which thrives tardily and only
when the general growth has been attained.

The twelfth century is a creative and construc
tive era, and the development of thought and of
life is extraordinarily rapid in all directions. All
the forces are in ebullition, as in a crucible. The
heritage from the Graeco-Roman wrorld, the reac
tion of the new races, the direction of Christianitj7 :
these three factors in the making of mediaeval civi
lization are now in process of compounding, and
the result is a conception of life, individual and so
cial, which is sui generis. A new spirit pervades
the policy of kings. The particularism of the local
lords comes into diverse conflict with the aspira
tions of the central power, whilst the rural classes
welcome the dawn of liberty and the townsfolk
awake to the possibilities of vast commercial enter
prises. Men are seeking governmental forms in
which all classes of society can find their place and
play their part. The Crusades, once begun, recur
at brief intervals and bring the various peoples to
gether and direct their attention to the Orient; at
the same time they foster in a manner hitherto un
paralleled the ideal of a great human brotherhood,
resting upon the Christian religion. The Church
pervades all circles, through her monks, her clerics,
her bishops. The Papacy, which has been central
since the days of Gregory VII, assumes interna
tional significance and gradually organizes itself

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 17

into a theocratic government. The customs of
feudalism and of chivalry arise, as characteristic of
the age. The early mediaeval man is developing;
he may go to excess in his virtues and his vices, but
beneath his rough exterior he cherishes a Christian
ideal, and often at the cost of his life. A new form
of art arises which finds its most ardent promoters
in Churchmen. Other Churchmen give themselves
to the cultivation of science and letters, and thus are
laid the foundations of that imposing philosophical
monument, scholasticism, which is to guide and di
rect the thought of centuries. Thus philosophy is
only one of the elements in this new civilization.
In reality it receives more than it gives. Some of
the influences which operated upon it from the sur
rounding environment we shall outline in due time.6
But first we shall make a rapid survey of French
mediaeval society and of the type of mentality
which passed over from it to the intellectual circles
of the West.7 Concluding the present chapter, let
us consider briefly the thirteenth century.

In the thirteenth century mediaeval civilization
brings forth its full fruit. The feudal monarchy
receives into its organic being all those social forces
which make for national life. Material welfare in
creases and the relations between nations grow
apace. Art speeds on its triumphal way. Gothic
architecture springs up beside the Romanesque;
painting comes into existence; and literature be-

e See ch. III.
7 See ch. IT.

18 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

gins to take wing in a flight which issues in Human
ism. Religion contributes more than ever to unity ;
it enters into all the sentiments and the life of the
age. The Papacy reaches the apex of its power;
and, supreme over kings and emperors, it domi
nates every aspect of social activity. Everywhere
a sort of stable equilibrium prevails. Men are
proud of the way in which they have organized
human existence. Philosophical ideas and systems
appear in abundance, exhibiting a luxuriance un
equalled since the Hellenistic age.8 Among these
numerous systems scholasticism is most in harmony
with the age, and as its completest expression be
comes the reigning philosophy. Its roots are to be
found everywhere in the civilization of the thir
teenth century. First, because it exhibits those re
lational aspects which unite it with all the other
spheres of activity.9 Second, because many of its
doctrines bear the stamp of characteristically me
diaeval ideas, both social and moral.10 Third, be
cause scholasticism is above all, the philosophy of
those people who are at the head of the cultural
movement in the thirteenth century.11 In what
follows we shall endeavour to substantiate these
statements.

s See ch. IV.

9 See chs. V-VII.

10 See chs. VIII-XII.

11 See ch. XIII.

CHAPTER TWO

SURVEY OF CIVILIZATION ix THE
TWELFTH CENTURY

i. Feudal Europe, ii. Catholic influences: Cluny, Citeaux,
the bishops, the Pope. iii. A new spirit: the value and dig
nity of the individual man. iv. New forms of art. v. The
twelfth century one of French influences.

To understand how the civilization of the twelfth
century is reflected in its philosophy, we must view
in a general way the elements of that civilization
which are most intimately connected with intellec
tual life, — namely, political institutions, moral and
social ideals, standards of art, and religious beliefs.

These several elements operate in various ways
in the different countries of Europe; but in our
general survey we shall consider rather the resem
blances, without meaning thereby to deny or to be
little the differences. Since it is in France that this
civilization produces its choicest fruits, it is there
especially that we must seek its most original and
coherent forms.

In the political and social orders feudalism had
become general. Barons, dukes, earls, and lords
lived independently in their own castles and
usurped more or less of the sovereign right. Not

20 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

only did relations of personal loyalty exist between
them, but obligations founded upon a free contract
bound one man to another, according to some privi
lege or some land given and received. The one, the
vassal, was bound to render service; the other, the
lord, was equally bound to protect and defend.

In France, where the new organization appears
in its purest form, nothing is more complicated
than the scheme of feudalistic relations. At the
head, theoretically, but not always practically, stood
the king. The greatest lords were vassals of other
lords. Were not the feudal relations of Henry II
of England and Louis VII of France the starting
point for all their wars and quarrels? For, the
first became the vassal of the second on the very day
he married Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose duchy was
granted by the French king to the English mon
arch. The particular and local lords were forced to
fight against the centralizing tendencies of the
kings, and the antagonism of the vassals and the
king, their suzerain, was the main feature of French
policy in the twelfth century.1 Particularism re
mained, but it was on the decline, and the following
century witnessed the triumph of the centralizing
principle.

A similar development occurred in England.
For, that country was so closely connected with
France that their combined territories may be called

i A. Luchaire, "Louis VII, Philippe Auguste, Louis VIII," His-
toire de France, pub. par Lavisse, 1902, vol. III.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 21

the common soil of the mediaeval civilization.
English society, as a whole, had its origin in JFrench
soil; at any rate, the seeds were planted in 1006
by William the Conqueror and his French barons,
Kings of French blood, who came from Normandy
and from Anjou, ruled over the British Isles; but
much of their time was spent in their French prov
inces. French was the court-language; they made
provision for burial in the Norman abbey of Caen
or the Angevine abbey of Fontevrault; they drew
their counsellors from France and favoured the
establishment of French clergy and French monks
in England. The English King Henry II, the
first of the Plantagenet dynasty, was one of the
most thorough-going organizers of the age; indeed
one might well take him for a contemporary of
Philip the Fair of France.2 Is it then surprising
that we find England too being divided into feudal
domains, and the royal policy exhibiting the same
centralizing tendency?

But while monarchy and feudalism were so close
ly akin in France and in England, they presented
quite a different aspect in Germany. The reason
was that at the very time when the king's power
was weakening in France, the Saxon dynasty of the
Ottos had established in Germanjr an autocratic
regime, patterned after that of Charlemagne. The
German kings, who had been crowned Emperors

2 A. Luchaire, op. cit., p. 49. Henry II, 1133-1189; Philip the
Fair, 1269-1314.

22 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

of the A Vest, held the nobles in a sort of military
servitude; they appointed bishops and abbots and
bound them to military service. However, little by

•/ v

little, the principalities asserted their rights; the
fast developing towns gained more freedom. We
shall see3 how the monks of Cluny contributed to
this change. Thus, by a process of decentraliza
tion, Germany gradually assumed in the twelfth
century a more feudal aspect, while France and
England were developing toward centralization.

During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the
destiny of Italy is intimately connected with that
of Germany. The reason for this was that the Ger
man imperial ambitions involved the seizure of
Italy, a great country which was also divided into
various principalities. The emperors were success
ful for a time; but much opposition developed.
Hence their long struggle against the Lombard
cities, which were true municipal republics; against
the Papacy, which was to triumph finally; against
the great southern realm of the Sicilies, which had
been founded by Norman knights and was a centre
of French feudal ideas, being governed by French
princes.

As for Spain, situated as it was on the confines
of the western and the Arabian civilizations, it pre
sents a unique aspect. The Christian kingdoms of
Castille, of Leon, of Navarre, of Aragon. had un
dertaken to "reconquer" the Peninsula from the

3 See ch. II, ii.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 23

Mussulman, and they were organized on French
feudal principles. On the other hand, the South
remained in the hands of the Infidels, and the in
filtration of Arabian civilization was to have its
part in the philosophical awakening of the thir
teenth century, as we shall see.4

Hence, when we consider the outstanding fea
tures of the political and social situation, feudal
divisions are found everywhere. France, which
seems to be the starting point for the system, Eng
land after the Conquest, some parts of Italy and of
Spain, and also Germany— the whole of western
Europe, in fact, presents the appearance of a check
erboard.

The Catholic Church was intimately connected
with this feudal system, through her bishops, who
were lords both temporal and spiritual, and more
especially through the abbots of her monasteries.
The twelfth century is the golden age of the abbeys.
In no period of history has any institution had a
closer contact with both religious and social back
ground than had the abbeys of Cluny and Citeaux.
These were the two great branches of the Benedic
tine stem, the two mother-houses whose daughters
were scattered throughout France and Europe.

The ninth century had witnessed a disastrous re
laxation of religious discipline, and it was Cluny

< See ch. IV, iv.

24 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

which first returned to the faithful observance of
the rule of St. Benedict. The monastery was
founded in Burgundy in 910 by a feudal lord, Duke
William of Aquitaine. And just here we meet
with a peculiar phenomenon, which shows how the
religious spirit had become the great moral force
of that period. "The abbeys built in the ninth and
the tenth centuries," says Reynaud,5 "to restore the
ancient rule of St. Benedict, were all, or nearly all,
the work of the military class." After a life of ad
venture and war, or after a stormy youth, these
proud feudal lords often shut themselves up in cloi
sters, to do penance. They renounced the world,
and henceforth their austerities were performed
with the same ardour which they had formerly ex
hibited in their exploits of war. Thus, Poppo of
Stavelot was affianced to a wealthy heiress, when
one evening, on his way home after visiting her, a
bright light suddenly shone about him; whereupon
he was terrified, and in remorse for his past life he
donned the Benedictine cowl. Examples of such
conversions are numerous.

The monks of Cluny not only instilled a new
religious zeal within their own cloister, not only did
they restore discipline and vows and piety, not only
did they sustain and augment the fervid faith of the
people depending on them; they also awakened the
same spirit in a great many other monasteries.

s L. Reynaud, Les oriyines de I'influence fran^aise en AUemagne,
Paris, 1913, p. 43.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 25

This was effected through a far reaching reform:
ihe federation of monasteries. For, up to that time,
the Benedictine monasteries had been independent.
But Cluny organized these groups and placed it
self at the head of a strongly centralized regime.
It became a mother-house whose daughters spread
rapidly abroad throughout all France and England
and Germany and Northern Spain and Hungary
and Poland. At the beginning of the twelfth cen
tury, two thousand Benedictine houses were de
pendent on the Cluny system ; and today dozens of
French villages still bear the name of St. Bene
dict, in memory of one or another of those Bene
dictine monasteries. All western Christendom was
enmeshed in a great network of monastic institu
tions, of which Cluny was the soul and the inspira
tion; and thus one mind and one polity permeated
the whole system.

In this process of federalization the abbey of
Cluny was successfully modelled after the feudal
system ; but it then in turn proceeded to impregnate
that same feudalism with its own spirit. Tims, the
feudal conception appears in the vow of devotion
which attached a monk to his monastery as a vassal
to his lord, and which he might not break without
his superior's consent; in the sovereignty of the ab
bot; in his visits as chief to his subordinates; in the
contributions of the affiliated monasteries to the
mother-house ; and in the graded series of federated
groups. But, by its far reaching influence, so

26 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

mighty a power could successfully combat the
forces of evil in contemporary society, and it could
also turn current ideas to the service of Christian
ity. Cluny christianized feudalism. This influence
is revealed to us in four main aspects, which we
shall now consider.

First, the monks treated their serfs with justice
and kindness ; those fellow human beings who were
born on their land and who worked with them in
forest and field. And this was done at a time when
the lay barons considered their serfs as slaves and
mere instruments. "We exercise the same author
ity as the seigneurs," writes Peter the Venerable,
abbot of Cluny at the beginning of the twelfth cen
tury, "but we make a different use of it. ... Our
serfs are regarded as brothers and sisters. Servos
et ancUlas, non ut servos ct antillas, sed ut fratrea
et sorores habent/'0

Second, and most important, the monks intro
duced Christian ideals into the minds of feudal
barons. By the sublime morality of Christ, com
pounded of gentleness and love, they tempered all
that was brutal in the ways of those developing
Gallo-Franks and Anglo-Celts, whose blood was
eager for war and for combat and for cruelty.
Cluny imposed on them the Peace and Truce of
God, wherein we find something of those rights of
humanity that exist for all time. Once the Truce of
God is established, so runs the enactment, all clerks,

e Epist. 28, Migne, Patr. lat. vol. 189, col. 146.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 27

peasants, merchants, and non-combatants in gen
eral, shall be entitled to relief from the violence of
the warriors. Even animals must be respected.
Religious edifices and public buildings are to be
safeguarded. Furthermore, hostilities shall be
suspended between Wednesday evening and Mon
day morning during all of Advent and Lent and
the Emberdays, as well as on all principal holidays.
When any community of human beings exhibits
consciousness of such duties, it has already emerged
from barbarism; and, whatever its structure in de
tail may be, it must be counted among those socie
ties of mankind that are destined to a high civi
lization.

Moreover, in the third place, Cluny moulded the
moral sense of chivalry, transformed its ideals, and
introduced religion into its ceremonies. Once the
knight came in contact with Christian morality, he
was no longer an egotistic, ambitious, and brutal
warrior; he learned to be loyal and generous; he
became the born-defender of the Church, the cham
pion of the weak, the opponent of violence. When
ever conferences were called to discuss peace, the
monks urged charity and forgiveness upon the
nobles, who frequently repented in tears; or,
indeed, the very men who had pillaged on the pre
vious day would forthwith set out on long pilgri
mages to St. James of Compostella or to Rome or
to Jerusalem, to expiate their crimes. And so the
monks of Cluny galvanized into life the nascent

28 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

virtues of the race. The word "Frank," originally
the name of a people inhabiting Gaul, came to be
synonymous with "loyal."7 It is under this aspect
that chivalry is represented in the numerous twelfth
century romances, in the Chansons de Geste of
which the Chanson de Roland furnishes the most
beautiful example. The union of the martial spirit
with the religious, and the alliance between feudal
system and Church became indissoluble. When
the time came to preach the Crusades, Cluny could
call with confidence upon the nobles to carry their
arms into the Holy Land. The First Crusade was
in fact a strictly Cluniac enterprise, and Pope Ur
ban II, who proclaimed it at the famous council of
Clermont, had been himself a monk of Cluny.
And where, indeed, does the influence of the mo
nastic ideal, as a social force, appear more clearly
than in those epics of audacity, those distant jour
neys on which so many young nobles lost their
lives ?

But the abbots of Cluny performed a fourth so
cial service; they undertook the reform of the secu
lar clergy, both priests and bishops. They con
demned the scandalous abuses of married bishops,
who lived like feudal barons, wholly given over to
feasting and war. They also worked to free the
bishops from the patronage of the great feudal
lords, who sold the episcopal offices, and they pro
claimed aloud that the bishops ought to be elected

7 Reynaud, op. cit., p. 339.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 29

by the people and by the clerics, — in the famous in
vestiture strife. The abuse, however, exercised its
most baneful influence in Germany, where the dukes
and abbots and bishops were, as we have seen, mere
creatures of the Emperor.8 Moreover, the Pope
himself had served as a German functionary ever
since Otto I had conquered Italy and placed upon
his own head the crown of Charlemagne. It was
the great abbey of Cluny which altered this state
of affairs. It was Cluny that by one of its
daughter-houses, the abbey of Hirschau in the
Black Forest, introduced the ideas of the French
feudal system along with its monastic reform. The
French influence of Cluny not only softened the
barbaric habits of the German feudal lords, but it
also put an end to that dangerous privilege of
naming the Pope, which the German Emperors
had appropriated to their own advantage ; and thus
it delivered the Papacy from that humiliating yoke.
The famous Hildebrand had been formerly a monk
of Cluny; and, as Pope Gregory VII, he waged the
famous investiture strife against the Emperor,
Henry IV. This duel issued in the defeat of the
Emperor at Canossa. In that dramatic scene,
which concluded the struggle, were symbolized with
early mediaeval harshness the humiliation of the
Emperor and the triumph of the Cluniac ideas.
Henry IV was forced to cross, in midwinter and
without escort, the snow covered Alps, and for

s See above, p. 22.

30 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

three days to await audience with the Pope. Hugh,
the abbot of Cluny, was witness of the Emperor's
humiliation. For the first time, French ideas had
triumphed over the power of Germany,0 and these
French ideas were the ideas of Cluny. It was be
cause of such widespread and profound influence,
exercised on the mentality of the Middle Ages by
tlie celebrated monastery, that in 1910, at the mil
lennial congress which reunited at Cluny learned
men from everywhere, one of them could say, "We
are come to Cluny to sing a hymn to civilization."1

But the very prosperity of Cluny, especially with
its extraordinary wealth, became one of the chief
causes of its declining influence. At the beginning
of the twelfth century its monastic life had become
more lax, and henceforth its influence as a social
force waned.

But, after the order of Cluny had performed its
great service, there was established another Bene
dictine congregation, which renewed that famous
rule: the order of Citeaux in Burgundy, which im
mediately spread throughout all France, and Eu
rope generally, in the twelfth century. This new
order, commonly called Cistercian, was also a fed
eration of Benedictine houses, although £ach of
them was more independent than was the case in the
system of Cluny. The congregation of Citeaux
continued the work of reformation, moral and

9Cy. Lamprecht, Deutsche Ge.tchichte, III, pp. 192 and 193.

w MHlenaire de Cluny, Academic de Macon, 1910, vol. XV, p. Ixxiv.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 31

religious, with which Cluny had occupied itself; but
it attached more importance to that part of the rule
which called for manual labour, — and, indeed, by
undertaking works of public utility, such as drain
ing swamps and clearing vast expanses of territory,
the Cistercians changed the agricultural map of
Europe. At the same time, they did much to
abolish serfdom.

The religious and social spirit of Citeaux is most
apparent in the authoritative and energetic figure
of St. Bernard, who dominated the whole twelfth
century. Abbot of Clairvaux — a monastery
founded by him and a dependent of Citeaux — this
extraordinary monk was not only saint, and ascetic,
but he was surprisingly man of action as well. He
was a leader, an eloquent orator whose sermons
moved multitudes, and he dared to reprove the
great and the humble alike. Thus, he criticizes the
monks of Cluny as men "whose cowl is cut from the
same piece of cloth as the dress of the knight," and
whose churches are decorated with useless luxury.
He criticizes the abuses of the Roman court, and he
has no eye for the successor of Peter adorned witli
silk and borne upon a white palfrey and escorted
by clamorous ministers. He criticizes the abuses
in the lives of the clerics, and he cries out to their
teachers: "Woe betide you who hold the keys not
only of knowledge but also of power." He dares
to correct the most renowned professors, like Abae-
lard and Gilbert de la Porree, and summons them

32 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

to ecclesiastical councils. He urges men and wo
men alike to crowd into the monasteries; he pro
motes the Second Crusade; he encourages the ris
ing order of the Templars, that military order
whose members were at once monks and warriors,
and who added to the vows of religion those of de
fending the Holy Land and the pilgrims; he takes
interest in the founding of the order of the Car
thusians, in 1132, and of the Premonstratensians, in
1120; he dreams of moulding all society after the
plan of an ascetic ideal. His own ideal was even
more lofty than that of his age ; and when he died,
in 1153, mediaeval society had already achieved the
height of its monastic ideal.11

But our picture of the mentality of the period
would be incomplete if we rested simply with the
activities of the Benedictine orders; in addition we
must point out briefly the activities of bishops and
Pope.

The bishops were involved more intimately in
the working of the feudal machinery than were the
monasteries ; for they were temporal princes within
the limits of their fiefs and prelates in their dioceses.
They owed to their overlords support in time of
war, and such bishops as Hugh of Noyers, at Aux-
erre, or Mathew of Lorraine, at Toul, were war
riors of a rough and primitive type. Others, like
Ktienne of Tournai, Peter of Corbeil, William of
Champagne, were humanists and men of letters.

11 See Vaoundard, Vie de S. Bernard, 2 vol. Paris, 1902.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 33

Maurice of Sully, elected bishop of Paris in 1160,
was a model administrator in the days of the great
changes in studies effected at Paris. The bishops
of Chartres, of Laon and of Tournai play no less
important a part in the domain of letters.

Finally, we could not understand the political
and social spirit of Europe, in the twelfth century,
without taking into account the growing prestige
of the Papacy. After having been freed, by the
action of Cluny, from the humiliation of the Ger
man Emperor, the way was open to the Papacy of
becoming the greatest moral force in the world.
During the twelfth century it was in process of or
ganizing the theocracy, which was to reach its
zenith in the following century, under Innocent
III. On those pious Christian kings of France,
the action of the Papacy exerted always a power
ful political influence. "In the Middle Ages, the
French crown and the Papacy could be near to
falling out with each other, but they were never
separated."12

12 Luchaire, op. cit., p. 149. The bourgeoisie of the towns, or com
munes, should be mentioned also in this connection. The towns first
rose, in Italy and elsewhere, at the beginning of the eleventh cen
tury, and during the twelfth century they became real factors in the
general progress. The bourgeoisie, or body of merchants, assumed
organized form, and it adapted itself to feudalism. "L'air de la
ville donne la liberte," since a serf who lived in a town for a year
and a day secured thereby his freedom and retained it. In the
thirteenth century the nouveaux riches of the merchant class laid the
foundations of a "patriarcat urbain" which was destined to rival the
nobility in wealth.

34 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

III

We have now seen how a new spirit was in
process of formation. What then constitutes the
essence of this spirit — the spirit which arose from
the depths of the mediaeval soul, and which became
impregnated with Christianity, and which, from
England and France, penetrated the whole of
western Europe?

The feudal sentiment par excellence, which is
still so deeply embedded in our modern conscience.
is the sentiment of tlie value and dignity of the in
dividual man. The feudal man lived as a free man ;
he was master in his own house; he sought his end
in himself; he was — and this is a scholastic expres
sion — propter seipsum exist ens; all feudal obliga
tions were founded upon respect for personality
and the given word. The scrupulous observance of
feudal contract engendered the reciprocal loyalty
of vassal and lord ; fraternal feelings and self-sacri
fice among men belong also to this class.

Under the influence of Cluny, this feudal senti
ment became Christian in character, because Chris
tianity placed upon each soul purchased by Christ's
sacrifice an inestimable worth, and it furnished the
poor and the rich and the great and the small with
the same standard of value. The scrupulous ob
servance of the feudal contract engendered loyalty.
When lovaltv became a Christian virtue, it in-

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 35

creased respect for women and probity in the
poor, — that probity which St. Louis IX said was
like sweet honey to his lips. Honour became the
pass-word of chivalry — a sort of moral institution
superimposed on feudalism. The social habits of
educated laymen were made gentler by the warm
contact of chivalry, and courteous manners spread
far and wide.

But the twelfth century gave birth also to en
tirely new forms of art, — and, indeed, in a marvel
ous wav. All branches on the tree of art began

»/

quickly to flower under the grateful zephyrs of the
new spring that was come: chansons dc geste, or
romances invented by the troubadours; the letters
of Abaelard and Heloise, which, however restrained,
reveal all the fervour of human love; those hymns
of purest Latin writen by men like St. Bernard,—
whose flow suggests now the murmuring of a brook
and anon the roaring of a river in flood — or those
stanzas penned by Adam of St. Victor, that won
derful poet who, in the silence of his cloister at
Paris, sang the festivals of divine love in most
perfect Latin form.13

But, above all, there were built at that time
those magnificent Romanesque abbeys and

is Cf. Henry Adams, Mont St. Michel and Chartres, ch. XV:
"The Mystics."

36 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

churches with their varied new forms, — such as
barreled vaults, towers, doorways, cruciform
ground-plan, choirs with surrounding ambulatories
and radiating chapels. In these forms the func
tions of the Church shine forth with marvelous
clarity, and yet in them the virile power of the
period is harmoniously revealed. Local schools of
architecture appeared, such as those of Normandy,
of Auvergne, of Poitou, of Burgundy; and the
Benedictine abbots were promoters of the new stan
dard of architecture. They did not adopt a uni
form Romanesque style; rather they took over and
developed the architecture of the region in which
they happened to be. At the same time, they
pressed into the service of architecture all the de
vices of ornamentation. The bare pillars were
clothed with life, their capitals were covered with
flowerings in stone; the portals were peopled with
statues; painted glass was put in the windows of
the sanctuaries ; frescoes or mural paintings covered
the walls and concealed the nakedness of the stone :
the whole church was covered with a mantle of
beauty. Artist-monks were trained in sculpturing
columns and statues and they travelled from one
workshop to another, while yet others opened
schools of painting, as in St. Savin near Poitiers
where the twelfth-century frescoes still retain their
bright colouring.14

i* In these frescoes the "courtesy" of the time is very striking,
especially in the bearing of ladies and knights, so full of elegance.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 37

It is generally admitted that the feudal customs
and the manifestations of art born in France spread
thence into other countries,— and the Benedictines
of Cluny and of Citeaux were the principal agency
in this diffusion. In England the infiltration of
feudal customs is easily explained by the close re
lations existing between the two countries; and the
orders of Cluny and Citeaux swarmed thither like
bees from a hive. The abbey churches of St. Al-
bans and Malmesbury and Fountains Abbey were
built upon principles brought over from Nor
mandy. But for all their borrowing, whatever it
may have been, they certainly possess the charm of
originality. Epic literature, however, which at
tained such a high degree of perfection in Chaucer,
shows still the influence of the French fabliaux.
For, in the twelfth and in the thirteenth centuries
"France, if not Paris, was in reality the eye and
brain of Europe, the place of origin of almost every
literary form, the place of finishing and polishing,
even for those forms which she did not originate."1

German historians, such as Lamprecht and
Steinhausen, recognize the same hegemony of
French ideas in Germany.16 The Cistercians, who
poured forth from France, undertook in Germany

15 Saintsbury, The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Alle
gory, London, 1897, p. 266.

ifi Steinhausen, Geschichte der deutschen Kultur, Bd. I, 1913, p.
312: "Frankreich wird das kulturell-fiihrende Land."

38 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

and Bohemia and Hungary the work of clearing
the forests — which so changed the economic face of
Central Europe. But it was also Frenchmen who
introduced at the Swabian court the habits of cour
tesy, — from the manner of greeting and the way
of comporting oneself at table to the habit of con
trol and moderation in all things. The monks of
Cluny carried Romanesque architecture along the
Rhine, while the Cistercian monks became later the
propagators of Gothic architecture.

Finally, Romanesque architecture borne on the
wings of French influence was carried, together
with chivalry, across the Alps. They crossed the
Pyrenees as well, and the Moorish genius imparted
its smile to the severer forms of Occidental art.

So, turn where we will, the twelfth century is a
constructive one; great forces are in the making,
though their action is not yet a combined one. The
local spirit, which splits France, England, and the
other countries into small feudal municipalities, and
is revealed even in the separate workshops of the
artists, appears in every detail of the organized
social and religious life.

CHAPTER THREE

THE CIVILIZATION AS REFLECTED IN PHILOSOPHY

i. Location of philosophical schools ; invasion of French
schools by foreigners, ii. Delimitation of the several sciences ;
philosophy distinct from the seven liberal arts and from the
ology, iii. Harmony of the feudal sense of personal worth
with the philosophical doctrine that the individual alone
exists, iv. The feudal civilization and the anti-realistic solu
tion of the problem of universals.

SUCH a civilization was ripe for the things of the
spirit. And -so it came about that culture, both
intellectual and philosophical, burst into bloom in
this flowering season of things mediaeval. As a
plant of rare nature, it shot up in the midst of an
exuberant garden. We shall limit ourselves to a
threefold consideration of the reflection of civiliza
tion in philosophy during the twelfth century:
namely, the localization of schools; the definite dis
tinction of the several branches of learning; the
affirmation in philosophical terms of the worth of
human personality.

First, it was quite natural that philosophical life
should be subjected to the confinement of that same
local spirit which appeared everywhere.

All over France numerous independent schools
were gathered about the cathedrals and the abbeys.

40 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

Each was a child of liberty, a literary republic, de
pending only on bishop or abbot; for in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries there was no government
control of education. Each school sought to out
rival the others by increasing its library, by attract
ing professors of renown, and by drawing students
to its intellectual tournaments.

This educational regime was salutary, for it pro
moted the study of the sciences and raised a legion
of remarkable humanists, theologians, lawyers, and
philosophers. We need but cite the schools of
Cluny and Citeaux in Burgundy; of Bee in Nor
mandy ; of Aurillac and of St. Martin at Tours ; of
Lobbes; of St. Omer; the cathedral schools of
Laon, of Chartres, of Rheims, of Paris; and many
others. All of them developed in the midst of
feudal principalities, in spite of the fact that the
overlords were generally at war. This was possi
ble at that time because war interested only the
professional fighting men, and did not affect the
living conditions of any country as a whole. Among
the most famous teachers of the twelfth century
were Anselm of Laon, William of Champeaux,
Abaelard, Hugo and Richard of St. Victor, Adel-
ard of Bath, Alan of Lille, and the scholars of
Chartres ; but there were many others, whose names
will appear as we proceed. They liked to go from
one place to another, and we see a certain system of
exchange professors in vogue. William of Cham
peaux taught philosophy successfully in the cathe-

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 41

dral schools of Laon and of Paris, and in the abbey
of St. Victor in Paris; Theodoric of Chartres was
professor at Chartres, and also at Paris; William
of Conches and Gilbert de la Porree went to Char
tres and to Paris; Adelard of Bath was at Paris
and at Laon ; Peter Abaelard — the knight-errant of
dialectics, who summoned to the tourney of syllo
gisms as others of his family summoned to the
tourney of arms — lectured in Melun, in Corbeil, in
his private school at the Paraclete, and he returned
several times to the cathedral schools in Paris.

In the time of Abaelard, the invasion of the
French schools by foreigners had reached its height.
Above all, the influx of English students was ever
increasing. This was due to the close relations ex
isting between both countries and to the lack of
educational centres in the British Isles. More than
one remained to teach where he himself was taught.
For example, there was Adelard of Bath, who
speaks of the Gallicarum sententiarum constantia,
and who left his nephew at Laon to master the
Gallica studia while he himself travelled in Spain;1

i "Meministi nepos, quod septennio jam transacto, cum te in gallicis
studiis pene parvum juxta Laudisdunum una cum ceteris auditori-
bus in eis. dimiserim, id inter nos convenisse, lit arabum studia ego
pro posse meo scrutarer, gallicarum sententiarum constantiam non
minus adquireres." Adelardi Batensis de quibusdam naturalibus
quaestionibus, Man. lat. Escorial, O III, 2, fol. 74 II". Cf. P. G.
Antolin, Catalogo de los codices latinos de la reril B'ibl. del Excorial,
vol. Ill, p. 22G. I have not succeeded in finding a copy of the in-
cunabel edition of this interesting treatise.

42 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

also there was the Scotchman Richard of St. Vic
tor in the mystic cloister of St. Victor in Paris ; and
there was Isaac of Stella, also an Englishman, in
the abbey of Stella close to Poitiers; and the most
famous of all was John of Salisbury, who became
bishop of Chartres after having taught in its cathe
dral school. Others settled in their native country,
after having studied at Paris, such as Walter Map
and Alexander Neckham. Meanwhile, French
scholars also went to England and settled there;
such were, for example, Peter of Blois and Richard
Dover.2 All of these men agree in recognizing the
importance of the training afforded by the French
schools.

As for Germany, the attraction of French learn
ing was no less irresistible. Even in the tenth
century the German Emperors recognized this su
periority, and summoned to their court French
masters. Thus, the Emperor Otto III wrote a let-

"\Vith the above compare the expression: "Franci(a)e magistri,"
in an unpublished thirteenth century manuscript, in connection with
the difficulty of translating Aristotle's Posterior Analytics (C. H.
Haskins, "Mediaeval Versions of the Posterior Analytics." Harvard
Studies in Classical Philology, 1914, vol. XXV, p. 94.) "Nam trans-
latio Boecii apud nos Integra non invenitur, et id ipsum quod de ea
reperitur vitio corruptions obfuscatur. Translationem vero Jacobi
obscuritatis tenebris involvi silentio suo peribent Francie magistri,
qui quamvis illam translacionem et commentarios ab eodem Jacobo
translatos habeant, tamen noticiam illius libri non audent profited."

~ J. E. Sandys, "English Scholars of Paris and Franciscans in Ox
ford," in The Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. I, pp.
199 ff.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 43

ter to the famous Gerbert, professor in Rheims and
who later became Pope Sylvester II, in which he
said: "We heartily desire your presence here, dis
tinguished man, that you may relieve me of my
Saxon rusticity, Saaxmica rusticitas."3 Otto was
successful in creating an interesting intellectual
movement within the confines of his country. But
this renaissance of learning was not of long dura
tion; and from the eleventh century on the schools
of Fulda and Reichenau and St. Gall fell into de
cline and decay. In the twelfth century the same
fate befell the schools at Liege, which were depen
dent on the Empire.4 The German clerics also
went to French schools, — to Rheims, Chartres,
Laon, Paris, Le Bee — and the young barons con
sidered it a privilege to be educated at the court of
Louis VII. Otloh of St. Emmeram, Otto of Frei-
singen, Manegold of Lautenbach, Hugo of St.
Victor, in fact all German theologians and philoso
phers and humanists of repute in that century,
were educated in French schools. Paris is the
source of all science, writes Cesaire of Heister-
bach;5 scientists, adds Otto of Freising, have emi
grated to France, — and both chronicles merely
reecho the saying of the time: "To Italy the
Papacy, to Germany the Empire, and to France
learning."

sLettres de Oerbert (983-997), ed. Havet, Paris, 1889, p. 172.
* Of. my Histoire de la Philosophie en Belgique, Louvain, 1910,
pp. 18-22.

s Steinhausen, op. cit., p. 355.

44 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

Italy also sent men in no small numbers. In the
eleventh century the monk Lanfranc, a type of
wandering professor, serves as an example. From
Pa via and from Bologna he went to the abbey of
Bee, and there was joined by another Italian, the
Piedmontese Anselin of Aosta. In the twelfth
century, Peter Lombard and Peter of Capua, and
Praepositimis of Cremona all taught at Paris. Ro
lando Bandinelli, the future Pope Alexander III,
pursued his studies under Abaelard; and he who
was to become Innocent III learned his theology
and his grammar at Paris. It must be said, how
ever, that in Italy more than in England and in
Germany, there were independent centres of intel
lectual life. Suffice it to mention the schools of Bo
logna, whence arose a university as ancient and as
influential as that of Paris, and the Benedictine
schools of Monte Cassino, wrhere in the eleventh cen
tury Constantine of Carthage established one of the
first Occidental contacts with the world of Arabian
learning, and where later on Thomas Aquinas re
ceived his early education.

But not all French schools enjoyed equal celeb
rity; they were rated according to the fame of their
professors, just as today a school's reputation and
its worth depend upon the excellence of its teaching
staff. Hence, we can understand the change in
the fame of the schools. Thus, for example, with
the opening of the twelfth century, the cathedral
schools of Tournai (Odon of Tournai), of Rheims

IN THE MIDDLE ACES 45

(Alberic of Rheims and Gauthier of Mortagne).
of Laon (Anselm of Laon), had shed their last
splendour. For they were eclipsed by the cathedral
schools of Chartres, founded by Fulbert, at whicli
there developed during the first half of the twelfth
century a humanist movement, which devoted it
self to achieving a Latin style of rare elegance, a
perfect knowledge of the classics, and an acquain
tance with the complete Organon of Aristotle.
Bernard of Chartres, in 1117, became the first of a
line of famous masters; and Thierry of Chartres.
about 1141, wrote his celebrated treatise on the
liberal arts, the Heptateuclion, — written just as
the south portal of the cathedral was receiving its
ornamentation, with its detail of sculptured figures
which represent the trivium and quadrivium.

But even before this Paris had been in position
to assert the superiority of her schools. The fame
of Abaelard at the schools of the cathedral and of
St. Genevieve drew a host of students and masters
to Paris; the monastery of St. Victor, where Wil
liam of Champeaux founded a chair of theology,
became a centre of mystical studies; and the uni
versity was all but born.

The localism of these schools did not, however,
prevent a certain uniformity in method of teach
ing and in curriculum and in scholarly practise; and
this uniformity helped to pave the way for the cos
mopolitan character of the teaching of philosophy
in the universities. The localism and the centraliz-

46 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

ing tendency commingled, — very much as the au
tonomy of the feudal barons and the unifying
policy of the kings did in the political realm.

Studying and teaching were monopolized by one
social class, the clergy. The international hier
archy of the Church, and the universal use of Latin
as the scientific language established a natural
union among the masters of the West ; the frequent
migration of students and scholars, from school to
school, facilitated the spread of every innovation
in method, program, and vocabulary.

The twelfth century remained faithful to the
traditional program of the seven liberal arts, but
the frame was enlarged in every direction. This
brings us to a second group of ideas connected with
the spirit of the civilization, and which I call the
demarcation of boundaries between the sciences. In
the early centuries of the Middle Ages, the pro
gramme of studies included grammar-rhetoric-dia
lectic (logic), which comprised the trivium, and
arithmetic-geometry-astronomy-music, which com
prised the quadrivium; in this programme one readi
ly recognizes the beginnings of our modern second
ary education.

Grammar included not only the study of the
ancient and mediaeval grammarians (Donatus,
Priscian, and Remi of Auxerre), but also a study
of the classics themselves, — such as Virgil, Seneca,

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 47

Horace, and others. Cicero and Quintilian and
Marius Victorinus are mentioned as among the
authors preferred for instruction in rhetoric.6 For
a long time law was also regarded as a branch of
rhetoric; and it was not until the time of Irnerius
of Bologna that law was taught as a branch dis
tinct from the liberal arts course.0" About the mid
dle of the twelfth century the study of dialectics in
cluded all the Organon of Aristotle. As for the
teaching of the quadrivium, it always lagged behind
that of the trivium. Euclid is the master in mathe
matics. The study of astronomy was given a cer
tain impulse by Adelard of Bath, who was initiated
into the Arabian science in Spain about the middle
of the twelfth century.

But such a programme was felt to be too narrow
in the twelfth century, and philosophy notably re
ceived a definite place outside the liberal arts,—
which it leaves below, with theology above.

It has been long supposed, and people still say,
that philosophy in the Middle Ages was confused
with dialectics (one of the three branches of the
trivium above described) ; that it reduced to a hand
ful of arid disputes quarrels on the syllogism and
on sophisms. This thesis has a seeming founda
tion, thanks to certain dialectical acrobats who, in

c Clerval, Les tcoles de Chartres du moyen Age du V'e au XVI'e
sitrle, pp. 221 ff.

e" Be it observed, however, that the study of Roman law had never
been wholly abandoned in Western Europe.

48 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

the eleventh and twelfth centuries, emptied philoso
phy of all ideas and rendered it bloodless and bar
ren ("exsanguis et steiilis," are John of Salisbury's
words). But the truth is quite otherwise. These
"virtuosi," with their play on words and verbal
discussions, wrere strongly combated; and the men
of real worth — such as Anselm of Canterbury,
Abaelard, Thierry of Chartres, John of Salisbury,
and others — not only practiced dialectics or formal
logic with sobriety and applied it in accordance
with doctrine, but they created a place for philoso
phy separate from and beyond the liberal arts, and
consequently beyond dialectics. Their writings
treat of the problems of metaphysics and psychol
ogy, which is matter quite different from formal
dialectics.

While it hardfy exists in the "glosses" of the
Carlovingian schools, philosophy rapidly progresses
towards the end of the eleventh century, and in the
middle of the twelfth century consists of a con
siderable body of doctrine, which the following
centuries were to make fruitful.

Now when philosophy had gained its distinct po
sition, the propaedeutic character of the liberal
n.rts became evident: they serve as initiation to
higher studies. Men of the twelfth century take
them into consideration, and the first who are en
gaged with the classification of the sciences ex
press themselves clearly on this subject. Speak
ing of the liberal arts, "Sinit tanquam scptem inae,"

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 49

says a codex of Bamberg; they are, so to speak, the
seven ways that lead to the other sciences — physics
(part of philosophy), theology, and the science of
law.7 Hugo of St. Victor and others speak in the
same sense. At the end of the twelfth century, the
iconography of the cathedrals, the sculptures, and
the medallions in the glass windows, as well as the
miniatures in manuscripts, confirm this thesis. The
philosophy which inspired artists is represented as
existing apart from and by the side of the liberal
arts; for instance, at Laon and at Sens, and much
more so in the window at Auxerre placed above the
choir. The copy, still preserved at Paris, of the
Hortus Dcliciarum by Herrad of Landsberg (the
original at Strasburg was burnt during the bom
bardment in 1870) places philosophy in the centre
of a rose with seven lobes disposed around it,8 and
in the mosaic pavement of the cathedral of Ivrea,
philosophy is seated in the middle of the seven arts.9
But the twelfth century did more than clearly
distinguish the liberal arts from philosophy; it also
inaugurated a completer separation between phi-

7 "Ad istas tres scientias (phisica, theologia, scientia legum)
paratae sunt tanquam viae septem liberates artes que in trivio et
quadrivio oontinentur." Cod. Q. VI, 30. Grabmann, Die Gexchichte
der scholastichen Methode., 1909, Bd. II, p. 39.

s E. Male, L'art religieux du XUIe siecle en France, Etude snr
I 'icono graphic et sur ses sources d'inspiration. Paris, 1910, pp. 112 ff.
Cf. L. Brehier, L'art chretien. Son dcveloppement icono graphique
des origines a. nos jours. Paris, 1918.

» A. K. Porter, Lombard Architecture, New Haven, 1907, vol. I,
p. 347.

50 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

losophy and theology. And the establishment of
this doctrine of scientific methodology is of the
highest importance in the study in which we are
engaged. The question of the existence of philoso
phy as distinct from theology is, for philosophy, a
matter of life or death; and it is now definitely
answered, we may say unhesitatingly. But here
also there are historical stages, and their study is
illuminating and suggestive. The Middle Ages, in
the beginning, took up the Neo-Platonic and Au-
gustinian idea of the entire identification of philos
ophy with theology. Thus it is that John Scotus
Eriugena wrote in the ninth century: "Quid est
aliud de philosophia tractare nisi verae religionis,
qua summa et principalis omnium rerum causa
Dens et liumiliter colitur et rationabiliter in-
vestigatur, regulas exponere"1 But at the end
of the eleventh century, and especially after St.
Anselm had given his solution of the problem of the
relation between faith and reason, the distinction
between the two sciences was practically accepted;
and it is easy to see that St. Anselm, for example,
speaks sometimes as a philosopher and sometimes
as a theologian. The twelfth century advances a
step further, and the distinction between philoso
phy and theology becomes one of its characteristic
declarations. A codex of Regensburg of the
twelfth century clearly distinguishes philosophers,

10 l)e dirina praedesimatione, I, 1 (Patr. hit. vol. 122, c. 357-358).

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 51

"humanae videlicet sapientiae amatores," from the
ologians, "divinae scripturae doctores."1

I am of course aware that besides these texts
there are others in which philosophy is abused or
misunderstood; that reactionary minds, narrow the
ologians or disdainful mystics, condemned profane
knowledge as useless, or if they admitted philoso
phy, they reduced it to the rank of a vassal and a
serf of theology. In the eleventh century Otloh
of St. Emmeram forbade monks the study of it;
they, he said, having renounced the world, must
occupy themselves only with divine things. Peter
Damien wrote concerning dialectics, that even
though sometimes (quando) , by way of exception,
it is allowed to occupy itself with theological mat
ters and with mysteries of divine power (mysteria
divinae virtutis) , it should nevertheless renounce all
spirit of independence (for that would be arro
gance), and like a servant place itself at the ser
vice of its mistress, theology: Velut ancilla domi-
nae quodam famulatus obsequio subservire.12

Here for the first time this famous phrase ap
pears. It is repeated in the twelfth century by a
united group of so-called "rigorist theologians"-
Peter of Blois, Stephen of Tournai, Michael of
Corbeil, and many others. The lofty mystics of the
convent of St. Victor at Paris — Walter and Absa-

" Grabmann, op. tit., I, 191. cod. dm. No. 14401.

12 De divina omnipotcntia, c. 5 Patr. lat. vol. 14, e. 603.

52 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

Ion of St. Victor — went so far as to say that phi
losophy is the devil's art, and that certain theolo
gians who used it were "the labyrinths" of France.
But one must not forget that these detractors of
philosophy were a minority, just as the quibbling
dialecticians formed an exceptional class also, and
that already in the eleventh and the twelfth century
the best minds rejected the unhappy phrase of
Damien. St. Anselm had disavowed it. The Char-
trains, John of Salisbury, Alan of Lille, either ex
pressly oppose it or show by their writings that they
reject it. Moreover, the speculative theologians
who appeared at the beginning of the twelfth cen
tury and almost immediately formed three great
schools — Abaelard, Gilbert de la Porree, Hugo of
St. Victor — condemned the timidity of the "rigor-
ists," and the apologetic which they created (of
which we shall speak further on)13 is an effectual
counterpoise to the tendencies of Damien. Peter
Lombard himself, in spite of his practical point of
view, protests against such excessive pretensions.
The formula is condemned by the majority of intel
lectual philosophers and theologians. Hence it is
very unfair to judge the philosophers of the Mid
dle Ages by the doctrines of a minority — and that
in the twelfth century — against which the best
openly rebel. To make clear the origin of the
formula, that philosophy is the handmaiden of the
ology, should suffice to do justice in the matter.

is See ch. VII, iv.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 53

This consideration should relieve the philosophy of
the Middle Ages of that grave contempt which has
weighed upon it so long, — a contempt resting upon
the belief that it had no raison d'etre, no proper
method, no independence!

To say that philosophy, by the twelfth century,
had become clearly distinguished from the liberal
arts on the one hand and from theology on the
other hand, is to recognize that its limits were
clearly defined and that it had become conscious of
itself. Now this great first step in organization
had been made simultaneously by other sciences as
well, and they were thus all given independence,
though in different degrees. For example, there
was the development in dogmatic theology, which
progressed rapidly, as we have just said, and
spread widely in the great schools of Abaelard, of
Gilbert de la Porree, of Hugo of St. Victor, and
of Peter Lombard. It appeared also in the liberal
arts, of which one branch or another was more espe
cially studied in this school or that; for example,
grammar at Orleans and dialectics at Paris. It
was evidenced, moreover, in the appearance of
medicine, as a separate discipline, and especially of
civil (Roman) and canon law. Thus the impor
tant mental disciplines, on which the thirteenth
century was to thrive, had asserted their indepen
dence and intrinsic worth.

These demarcations, which seem to us so natural
and matter of course, have come at the cost of great

54 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

effort in every period of history which has attempt
ed their establishment — and necessarily so. Thus
the first Greek philosophers encountered the same
difficulty in this regard as did the scholastics of the
twelfth century. Even today, when classification
is so far advanced, discussions arise in fixing the
limits of new sciences ; witness the example of soci
ology. But this delimitation of philosophy in the
twelfth century was only one aspect of a rapidly
developing civilization. Do we not see a similar
movement in the political, the social, the religious,
and the artistic life? The royal prerogatives, the
rights and duties of vassals, the status of the bour
geoisie and of the rural population, the distinction
between temporal charge and spiritual function of
abbots and prelates, the monastic and episcopal
hierarchy, the clear establishment of new artistic
standards, — all of these are features of an epoch in
process of definition. The chaos and the hesitation
of the tenth and the eleventh centuries have disap
peared. The new era exhibits throughout a sense
of maturing powers.

Ill

We may now penetrate more deeply, and con
sider the mass of philosophical doctrines which is
sued out of the efforts of the twelfth century. As
one does this, one cannot help noting how the chief
doctrines of the developing metaphysics harmo
nize with the predominant virtues of the feudal

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 55

spirit. And this brings us to our third point, and
indeed the most interesting one, concerning the re
flection of the civilization in the philosophy: name
ly, the harmony of the feudal sense of personal
worth with the philosophical doctrine of the reality
of the individual.

The feudal man was athirst for independence,
his relations with his overlord being determined by
free contract; moreover, by a kind of contagion,
the desire for a similar independence spread to the
townspeople and to the rustic population. This
natural disposition took on a Christian tone by vir
tue of the Church teaching concerning the value of
the individual life, — the individual soul bought at a
price. It was according to this humanitarian prin
ciple that Peter the Venerable called the serfs his
brothers and sisters.14

Roman civil law and canon law and feudal law—
the three forms of jurisprudence which developed
so rapidly from the eleventh century onward — had
come to remarkable agreement regarding the ex
istence of natural right; and in the name of this
right, based on human nature, they had proclaimed
the equality of all men. With this beginning, they
came to regard all differences of rank as conven
tional; and slavery and serfdom were declared to
be contrary to natural law. If, however, the three
forms of law recognized the legitimacy of serfdom,
it was because of the special conditions of the time.

i* See above, p. 26.

00 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

Serfdom was considered a social necessity. Under
the influence of Christianity, all three systems of
law sought to mitigate serfdom; and this was espe
cially true of the civil lawyers and the canonists,
who put into effect a series of measures for the
benefit of the serf, which guaranteed the indissolu-
hility of his marriage, assured him his right of
sanctuary, encouraged his emancipation, and pre
scribed rules in regard to his ordination and his
entry into a monastery. These ideas made head
way, — slow, to he sure, hut steady- — toward that
state of society wherein the serf could he set free
with the liberty which is due all human beings.15
Now the scholastic philosophy of the twelfth
century based these juridical declarations upon
metaphysical foundations ; and they came, after the
many centuries of discussion, to this important con
clusion — a conclusion no longer doubted — that the
only existing reality is individual reality. Indi
viduals alone exist; and only individuals ever could
exist. The thesis was general in its application.
Whether man or animal or plant or chemical body
or what not, a being must exist as an individual,
incommunicable, and undivided in itself. Simi
larly, everything that affects an existing being is

is For the conceptions of natural right and of serfdom among
the feudal theorists of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, see Carlyle.
A History of Mediaeval Political Theory in the West, vol. Ill, Part
II, ch. I; among the civil lawyers, ibid., vol. II, Part I, ch. IV;
among the canonists, ibid., vol. II, Part II, ch. V.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 57

particularized; man's act of thinking, the shape of
an animal, the height of a plant, the activity of a
chemical molecule, — everything that exists, exists in
the condition of particularity. Scholastic philoso
phy is pluralistic; it regards the real world as a
collection of individuals and particulars.10

Individuality when applied to a human heing is
called personality. Throughout the twelfth cen
tury the philosophers are unanimous in repeating
the words of Boethius: persona est rationalis na
turae individua substantial

For a long time, the schools had oscillated be
tween the extreme realism which taught with Plato
that universal essences, such as humanity, have a
real existence, and the anti-realism which denied
the existence of such realities. But by the twelfth
century the debate had been closed in favor of anti-
realism. Notwithstanding their various shades of
difference,18 the theory of respectus advanced by
Adelard of Bath in Laon and in Paris, the doctrine
of status taught by Walter of Mortagne, the so-
called "indifference-theory" and the "collection-
theory" reechoed by the anonymous author of the
De Generibus et Speciebus, — all of these theories,
mentioned by John of Salisbury in his Metalogi-
cus,™ agree in maintaining that universal essences

is See below, Chapter IX.

IT Boethius, De duabus naturis.

is Cf. my IJ Moire, de la Philosophic Mfd'u'vale, pp. 217-221.

i» II, 17.

58 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

could not exist, and that only the individual pos
sesses real existence.

Hence, the human perfection which constitutes
human reality is of the same kind in each person,—
king or subject, seigneur or vassal, master or ser
vant, rich or poor, these all have a similar essence.
The reality that constitutes the human person ad
mits of no degrees. According to scholastic philos
ophy, a being is either man or not man. No one
man can be more or less man than another, al
though each of us possesses more or less powerful
faculties which produce more or less perfect acts.20
In this sense Abaelard and Gilbert de la Porree,
and scores of others, agree with Peter the Venerable
and declare in philosophical terms, based on meta
physical principles, that "serfs are no less and no
more human beings than are their masters."

But Abaelard went a step further. As has been
only recently disclosed by the important discovery
of his Glossulae super Porphyrium*1 we can now
say definitely, that to Abaelard belongs the great
credit of having solved the problem of the universal
in the form that was followed throughout the
twelfth, the thirteenth, and the fourteenth centuries.
Indeed, to the metaphysical doctrine, Abaelard adds

20 See ch. IX.

21 By Grabmann and Geyer in the libraries of Milan and Lunel.
For the publication of this important text, see Bernhard Geyer,
"Peter Abaelards philosophische Schriften. I. Die Logioa Ingredi-
entibus. 1. Die Glossen zu Porphyrius," (Beitrage zur Geschichte
der Pldlosoplne des Mittelalters, Bd. XXI, Heft 1, Minister, 1919).

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 59

the psychological, which may be briefly summar
ized as follows: Although there exist only individ
ual men, although each one is independent of the
other in his existence, the mind nevertheless pos
sesses the general notion of humanity which belongs
to each of them ; but this form of generality is a
product of our conceptual activity and does not
affect the real existence.22 Therewith was given in
compact form essentially the scholastic solution of
the famous problem of the relation between the uni
versal and the particular.

This doctrine had grown up gradually, and its
formation runs parallel with that of the feudal
sentiment. Even while it is being clearly expressed
in the various philosophical works, the feudal feel
ing of chivalry appears in all its purity and
strength in the Chansons de Geste. The most ar
dent defenders of the philosophical solution are the
sons of chevaliers, — the impetuous Abaelard, heir
of the seigneurs of Pallet; Gilbert de la Porree,
bishop of Poitiers; the aristocratic John of Salis
bury, who writes concerning this question: "The

22 "Illud quoque quod supra meminimus, intellectus scilicet universa-
lium fieri per abstractionern et quomodo eos solos, nudos, puros nee
tamen cassos appelemus . . ." Edit. Geyer, pp. 24 ff. The epistemo-
logical solution appears clearly in the following text: "Cum enim
hunc hominem tantum attendo in natura substantiae vel corporis, non
etiam animalis vel hominis vel grammatici, profecto nihil nisi quod
in ea est intelligo, sed non omnia quae habet, attendo. Et cum dico
me attendere tantum earn in eo quod hoc habet, illud tantum ad at-
tentionem refertur, non ad modum subsistendi, alioquin cassus esset
intellectus." Ibid., p. 25.

60 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

world lias grown old treating of it, and has taken
more time for its solution than the Caesars took to
conquer and govern the world."23

The great scholastics of the thirteenth century
will appropriate this doctrine to their purposes,
bringing it into harmony with psychology and
ethics and social and political theories; and they
will incorporate it in that great synthesis which is
the most commanding product of the mediaeval
mind, — that is, scholasticism.

To sum up. The twelfth century witnesses a
new civilization established in a striking form. The
struggles of kings with vassals, the coming of the
communes, the establishment of citizenship, the
freedom of the serfs, — all of these facts are evi
dence that the balance is being established among
social forces. New habits, based upon the dignity
and the self-respect of the individual, were born out
of feudalism, and the Church impressed upon them
the stamp of Christianity. A new art springs into
life, and intellectual culture makes noteworthy
progress. The spirit of localism, which was the
result of split-up feudalism, breaks out in the nu
merous schools of the West; and herein appears
first the reflection of the age in its philosophy. The
demarcation of boundaries between philosophy and
all other disciplines discloses a further harmony be
tween its philosophy and the general spirit of the
age, — an age which constructs in all departments

23 Polycraticus, VII, 12.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 61

and destroys in none. Finally, the fundamental
quality of feudalism is reflected in one of the chief
doctrines of their metaphysics: the self-sufficiency
of the individual, whether thing or person, is pro
claimed in the schools of France and of England;
and the French and the English have never for
gotten this proud declaration of their ancestors, the
scholastics of the twelfth century.

CHAPTER FOUR
t

THE GREAT AWAKENING or PHILOSOPHY
IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

i. The causes: The acquired momentum, ii. The rise of the
Universities (Paris and Oxford), iii. The establishment of
the mendicant orders (Dominicans and Franciscans), iv. The
acquaintance with new philosophical works ; translations, v.
General result: among the numerous systems the scholastic
philosophy issues as dominant, vi. The comprehensive classi
fication of knowledge.

IT is now generally agreed, that the thirteenth
century marks the climax in the growth of philo
sophical thought in western Europe during the
Middle Ages. With the decade 1210-1220 begins
a development of extraordinary vitality which ex
tends over a period of one hundred and fifty years.
Let us examine the causes and the results of this
movement of thought.

What are the causes of this remarkable develop
ment of philosophical thought? How does it hap
pen that we see the appearance of so many vigor
ous systems, as though the seed had been thrown
with lavish hand upon the fertile soil of western
Europe?

The first cause is what I shall call the acquired
momentum. The intellectual labours of the twelfth

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 63

century gave the initial impulse. We have already
observed some of their achievements; for example,
their contributions in methodology, by which the
limits of each science and discipline were estab
lished, and without which no intellectual progress
would have been possible. We have noted also the
deliberate and unanimous declaration, that the indi
vidual alone can be endowed with actual existence
and substantiality. To the individual man,— lord
or vassal, freeman or serf, clergyman or layman,
rich or poor — philosophy spoke these bold words:
"Be yourself; your personality belongs only to
yourself, your substance is an independent value;
keep it ; be self-reliant ; free contract alone can bind
you to another man."

There are many other philosophical theories
which the twelfth century contributed to later gen
erations. Among them are the distinction between
sense perception and rational knowledge, and the
"abstraction" of the latter from the former; the
many proofs of the existence of God, the studies in
his Infinitude, and the essays in reconciling Provi
dence and human freedom ; the relation between es
sence and existence ; the views on the natural equal
ity of men and the divine origin of authority. But
these doctrines had not been combined into an inte
gral whole; and therefore the philosophers of the
thirteenth century used them as material in the con
struction of their massive edifice of knowledge.

64 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

But not alone in philosophy was the growth ex
traordinary and the ripening rapid; the same was
true of all domains. The constitution of the
Magria Charta (1215), the granting of privileges
by Philip Augustus to the University of Paris, the
birth of St. Louis and of Thomas Aquinas, the
death of St. Francis,— these are all events closely
coinciding in time; and the height of development
in scholastic philosophy followed closely upon the
height of development in Gothic architecture.

The best proof, however, of the value of the work
already accomplished lies in the very celerity of the
development during the thirteenth century; for the
succeeding generations of that century took swift
advantage of the favourable conditions which had
already been created for them. Thus, a few years
after these happy conditions obtained, that is about
122G-30, William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris,
and the Franciscan Alexander of Hales conceived
their great systems of thought; and then almost
immediately there appeared such men as Roger
Bacon, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and Ray
mond Lully. What they did would not have been
possible if their age had not been prepared to ac
cept their work,- — a preparation already assured in
the twelfth-century leaven of doctrine, with its
promise of growth and of increase.

But there were also external causes which hast
ened this elaboration of doctrine. Among these
there are three to be especially noted. Namely, the

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 65

rise of the University of Paris; the establishment
of the two great religious orders, both of them de
voted to learning; and the circulation of a large
number of new philosophical works, which were
brought from the Orient and which had been un
known to the Occident before that time in the Mid
dle Ages. These three causes cooperated in a
unique manner. For, the University of Paris was
the centre of learning; the new orders supplied the
same University with professors; and the books
brought from the Orient made a notable increase in
its working library.

During the last years of the twelfth century, the
French metropolis monopolized, to its advantage,
the intellectual activity which previously had been
scattered in the various French centers. The Uni
versity eclipsed the episcopal and monastic schools,
and thereby replaced the spirit of localism with that
of centralization in study.1

Towards the middle of the twelfth century the
schools of Paris were divided into three groups: (a)
the schools of the cathedral of Notre Dame, under
the authority of the chancellor and, through him, of
the bishop of Paris; (b) the schools of the canons
of St. Victor, which had become the throbbing cen-

i See Rashdall's excellent work: The Universities of Europe in the
Middle Ages. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1895. Cf. H. Denifle, Die
Universitiiten den Mittelallem bis 1400, Berlin, 1885.

66 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

tre of mysticism, but where also William of Cham-
peaux had opened a school in which he had been
teaching philosophy for some time; (c) the outside
schools of the abbey of St. Genevieve. But the
schools of Notre Dame occupied the foremost place,
and it was from them that the University sprang.
It arose not indeed through a decree of the govern
ment or a committee of trustees, but as a flower
grows from its stem, by a natural convening of
masters and pupils; for their number had multi
plied as a result of the constant development of
studies. Masters and pupils were grouped in four
faculties according to their special interests — the
University documents compare them to the four
rivers of Paradise, just as the iconography of the
cathedrals symbolically represents the four evange
lists as pouring water from urns toward the four
points of the compass. These are the faculties of
Theology, of Arts (thus called in memory of the
liberal arts of the early Middle Ages) , of Law, and
of Medicine.

The programme of studies in the University is a
living and moving thing. It takes form in the
second half of the thirteenth century, and at that
moment it is revealed in great purity of outline, like
something new and fresh, a distinctive and pleas
ing product of the Middle Ages. If one should
take, as it were, a snap-shot of the faculty of arts—
or of philosophy — as it was about 1270, he would
find that it is entirelv distinct from the other fac-

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 67

ulties, even from that of theology, as in our own
day. But the studies under its control fill a very
special place in the University economy, because
they are the usual, or even required, preliminary to
studies in the other faculties. They have a forma
tive and preparatory character, and for this reason
the faculty of arts appears in the documents with
the title of inferior faculty, facultas inferior, in dis
tinction from the three other faculties which are
placed over it and hence are called superior, facili
tates superiores.2 On this account the student popu
lation of the faculty of arts was young and numer
ous, a population of adolescents — pueri, the char
ters say. They entered at fourteen years ; at twenty
they might have finished their course in arts and
graduated. Then usually they entered another fac
ulty. But they had received the imprint of their
masters ; and the impressions given by philosophical
teaching are indelible, be it remembered. On their
side the masters or professors of the faculty of arts,
recruited from among the graduates in arts by a
curious custom of which we will speak in a moment,
also constituted the youthful, and therefore stir
ring, element in the teaching staff.

It is easy to distinguish in the faculty of arts the
two main features which characterize the entire
University: the corporate spirit and the extension
of instruction. The University as a whole is a cor-

2 Denifle et' Chatelain, Chartularium Univer.titatis Parisiensis, I,
p. 600.

68 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

poration, or group of masters and scholars. It
is even nothing but that; the word "universitas" is
taken from the Roman law and means corporation
or group; and the mediaeval period applies this
term to every kind of grouping, to the city, to the
parish, even to the universal Church; while docu
ments name the University proper, a general centre
of studies, — ffstudium gcncrale." The corporation
idea appeal's therefore in the organization of facul
ties, and gives to the faculty of arts or philosophy
a characteristic meaning. It includes masters and
apprentices. Indeed, the student at Paris is an
apprentice-professor, a candidate for the master
ship. His career is normally crowned, not by re
ceiving a diploma — which is simply the recognition
of knowledge — but by teaching in the corporation
of his masters. The studies, too, constitute simply
a long apprenticeship for the mastership or the pro
fessorship. He becomes a professor by doing the
work of a professor, as a blacksmith becomes a
blacksmith by forging. Indeed, the whole situa
tion strongly resembles the organization of work
men, of stonecutters and masons, who about this
time were building and carving the great cathedrals
of France. They, too, had their working-men's syn
dicates; and professional schools were organized in
their midst. The apprenticed workman was sub
jected to a severe and long initiation, and worked
under the direction of a master. To become master
in his turn, he must produce a work judged worthy

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 69

and called a masterpiece. The process was none
other for the future professors of philosophy at
the University of Paris.

During his six years of attendance, the pupil
cleared the three stages of baccalaureate (baccJia-
laurcus), licentiate (licentiatus) , and mastership
(magister). But the tests for the baccalaureate
had already included an attempt at public lecture.
After the new member had been subjected to some
preliminary examinations (responsiones et ex-
amen), he was required to mount a platform, and
invited to defend a systematically prepared thesis —
a process which sometimes lasted all through Lent
—and to answer the objections of those present.
This public defense was called determinatio, and
the student left it as a bachelor, — a term which was
employed by the corporation of workmen in a
special sense, the bachelors being "those who have
passed as masters in the art but who have not been
sworn in." The examination for the baccalaureate
is surrounded with the corporate ceremonial so dear
to the thirteenth century. The student puts on a
special cap. Then, the seance ended, wine is served
and a banquet arranged. Youth is everywhere the
same — the great days of university life must be
gaily celebrated. Between the baccalaureate and
licentiate there was a period of variable length, dur
ing which the bachelor was at once student and ap
prentice-professor. As student, he followed the
master's lessons and continued to acquire knowl-

70 PHILOSOPHY ANU CIVILIZATION

edge; as apprentice-professor, he himself explained
to others certain books of Aristotle's Oryanon.
When his term of six years had rolled around and
he had reached his nineteenth or twentieth year,
the bachelor could present himself before the chan
cellor to be admitted to the licentiate. Ceremonies
multiply: thus, the new examination to be under
gone before some of the professors of the faculty
(temptatores) , and then before the chancellor as
sisted by four examiners chosen by him and ap
proved by the faculty; the public discussion at
St.-Julicn-lc-Paircre upon a subject left to the
choice of the bachelor; and finally, amid great
pomp, the conferring of the long-coveted right to
teach and to open his own school.

There was still the third step to be taken — the
mastership; and here we are taken back to the
purest conceptions of the mediaeval corporation.
The mastership is the enthroning of the newly li
censed member before the faculty or society of
masters — that close organization, so jealous of its
monopoly, to which one had access only through the
agreement of all the members, and after having
given a pledge of fidelity to the rector and to the
faculty wrhich bound the master for life.

The mastership was in principle a free profes
sion, with no rules except the rules applying to the
organization as a whole, and with no limit upon the
number of the members. In consequence of this
arrangement, there was a great increase in the

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 71

teaching profession. The right to teach could not
be withheld from any student who had completed
the regular course of studies; and the number of
masters of arts incorporated in the faculty was
theoretically unlimited. We readily recognize cer
tain characteristic features in this system of uni
versity instruction of the thirteenth century: free
competition in teaching among all those who have
taken their degree; freedom of the students who
have become doctors, or "masters," to open schools
beside their former masters; and freedom of the
students to select their own masters, — the clearest
in exposition, the most eloquent in delivery, the
most profound in thought— entirely according to
choice.

This freedom in the teaching career was reflected
in the teaching itself, — in the spirit and action of
the masters. There was really great freedom of
thought and of speech in the thirteenth century,—
notwithstanding what is now commonly believed on
this subject. A very striking example may be
taken from the end of the century, in the person
of the philosopher Godfrey of Fontaines, — who was
also a "Doctor in Theology." From the teacher's
chair, — and aware of his privilege and responsibil
ity — he directs the severest criticism against his su
perior, the Bishop of Paris, Simon of l$ucy.3 He

3 For details see my study of Godfrey of Fontaines; Etudes sur la
vie, les oeuvres et I'influence de Godefroid de Fontaines, Louvain,
1904.

72 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

justifies his audacity by invoking the principle that
a Doctor of the University is bound to declare the
truth, however his speech may offend the rich and
the powerful. "Few there are to be found," he
says, "who can be blamed for excess of frankness;
but many indeed for their silence." Pauci invcni-
imtur qui culpari possunt dc excessu in veiitate di-
cenda, plurimi vero de tacit urn it ate.4 One could
cite many more examples of this great freedom of
speech among the masters; the University sermons
especially are full of it.5

Although the University of Paris possessed four
faculties, it was especially famous for its teaching
of philosophy and theology, just as Bologna, the
twin sister of Paris, was famed for its juridical
learning. Paris outstripped by far the University
of Oxford, which was its only rival in this particu
lar field.0 Thus Paris became the philosophical
centre of the West, the international "rendez-vous"
for all those who were interested in speculative
thought, — and their name was legion. By way of

* Oodefridi de Fontibus Quodlibeta, XII, q. vi, (fol. 278 Kb), Latin
MS. No. 15842, Bibl. Nat. I am cditin-g these Quodlibeta, with the
aid of former pupils; three volumes have appeared (in the series:
Les Philosophes Beiges, vols. II and III, Louvain, 1904 and 1914),
and two or three more will follow.

5 See, for example, C. Langlois: "Sermons parisiens de la pre
miere moitie du Xlll'e s. contenus dans le Ms 691 dc la Bibl. d'Ar-
ras" (Journal ties Savants, 1916, pp. 488 and 548).

6 Many other universities were established on the model of Paris
and Bologna; for instance, Cambridge, Montpellier, Toulouse, Sala
manca, Valladolid, Naples, — all of the thirteenth century.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 73

glorifying this philosophical speculation at the
University, the documents refer to Paris in the
most pompous terms : parens scientiarum, the alma
mater of the sciences; sapientiae fons, fountain of
wisdom, that is, the fountain of philosophy.

Paris drew to itself an endless stream of
strangers interested in these subjects. During the
thirteenth century all of those who have a name in
philosophy or in theology come here, sooner or
later, for a more or less prolonged sojourn. Ital
ians such as Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Peter
of Tarantaise, Gilles of Rome, James of Viterbo.
meet with masters from German provinces such as
Albert the Great, Ulric of Strasburg, Thierry of
Freiburg. From the region of Flanders or from
the Walloon country come Gauthier of Bruges,
Siger of Brabant, Henry of Ghent, Godfrey of
Fontaines, and they meet Danes, such as Boethius
the Dacian, and especially the English masters,
such as Stephen Langton, Michael Scot, Alfred
Anglicus (of Sereshel), William of Meliton, Alex
ander of Hales, Richard of Middleton, Roger
Bacon, Robert Kilwardby, Walter Burleigh, Duns
Scotus and William of Occam. Spain also is rep
resented by notable men, such as Peter of Spain,
Cardinal Ximenes of Toledo, and Raymond Lully.
Indeed, one can count on one's fingers the philoso
phers of the thirteenth century who were not trained
at Paris, such as the Silesian Witelo or Robert
Grosseteste, the organizer of the University of Ox-

74 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

ford, — and even the latter was indirectly influenced
by Paris. All of these strangers mingle with the
masters of French origin, William of Auxerre,
Bernard of Anvergne, William of St. Amour, Wil
liam of Auvergne, bishop of Paris. John of I^a
Kochelle, and Vincent of Beauvais. From their
midst are recruited the artificers of that great cos
mopolitan philosophy which is to mould the minds
of the educated classes.

Ill

The vigorous growth of the philosophical and
theological schools of Paris was singularly quick
ened by the rise of the two new religious orders,—
the Dominicans and the Franciscans — and by their
incorporation in the University. This stimulus
was so important that it justifies treating these or
ders as a further cause of the rapid development of
philosophy in the thirteenth century.

The Benedictine monasteries had fallen into de
cline, chiefly through excess of wealth which had
finally weakened their austerity. Francis of Assisi
and Dominic, who founded the two celebrated or
ders of Franciscans and Dominicans at about the
same time, effected a return to evangelical poverty
by forbidding the possession of this world's goods,—
not only to each of their disciples, but also to the
religious communities themselves. ' Hence their
name of "mendicant" orders; and Francis, called
77 poverino, spoke of poverty as his bride. It was

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 75

because they wished to preach to the multitudes
and to mingle more intimately in public and social
life that the Franciscans and the Dominicans estab
lished themselves in the town, whilst the Benedic
tines and the Carthusians had settled in the country.
At the same time the Dominicans and the Fran
ciscans were not slow in forming an intellectual
elite. For both orders, each in its own way, fos
tered learning in their members; and so they be
came, almost on the day of their inception, nurseries
of philosophers and theologians. It is really very
wonderful to follow the intense intellectual life
which is developed in the midst of these vast corpo
rations of workers. Hardly are they founded be
fore they establish themselves at Paris, in 1217 and
1219 respectively; they create in the young Uni
versity centre separate establishments of advanced
studies, "studia generalia," for their own members.
But at the same time, they are engaged in incorpo
rating themselves in the intellectual life of the Uni
versity, by obtaining chairs in the faculty of The
ology. Fortune favoured the rapid rise of the or
ders in the University faculty. In 1229 a strike of
the secular professors, at the schools of Notre
Dame, gave them their initial opportunity. The
voice of Parisian learning had become silent, as the
documents put it,— in omni facultate silet Parisien-
sis vox doctrinae. At this juncture the Dominicans
and the Franciscans offered their services to the
chancellor, and they were accepted. When later

76 PHILOSOPHY ANJ3 CIVILIZATION

the strike was concluded, the orders succeeded in
maintaining themselves in the faculty of Theology,
in spite of the opposition from the other members
of the faculty. The Dominicans had obtained two
chairs (one in 1229 and one in 1231), and at the
same time the Franciscans had secured a chair, of
which Alexander of Hales was the first incumbent.
The burning fever for work and the need of re
considering doctrine, in the light of the new philoso
phies brought from Arabia and Spain and Byzan
tium, created among the Franciscans and the
Dominicans a unique spirit of emulation and served
as a spur to zealous discussion. In every branch of
their activities and in every country the rivalry be
tween the two great orders breaks out. In religious
matters, they discuss the merits of their respective
ideals; in matters of art, their best artists glorify
the remarkable men of their own orders, — thus, fol
lowing a capricious impulse intelligible in artists,
the Dominican Fra Angelico shows in his pictures
of the Last Judgement certain Franciscans tumb
ling toward hell, while the Dominicans are received
into heaven! But nowhere are they more eager to
surpass each other than in the realms of philosophy
and theology. Those who would hold back are
shaken from their torpor; thus, in the vigorous
though rude style of the day, Albert the Great
speaks of the reactionaries of his order as "stupid
animals who blaspheme philosophy without under-

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 77

standing it."7 In 1284 the Franciscan John Peck-
ham, — who reminds one of Roger Bacon, in his im
pulsive character and in his tendency to exagger
ate — writes to the Chancellor of the University as
follows: "Certain brothers of the Dominican order
boast that the teaching of truth has a higher place
of honour among them than in any other existing
order."8

On the other hand, a certain blind rivalry per
sists between the "regulars" (those subjects to
Dominican or Franciscan rule), and those who call
themselves "secular" teachers (seculares). The
latter could not conceal their animosity toward
their monkish colleagues: and the University writ
ings of the period are full of the quarrels which re
sulted. Thus, as Dominicans and Franciscans op
posed each other on points of doctrine, the seculars
reveal their malice by comparing the twin orders to
Jacob and Esau who quarrelled in the very womb
of their mother. However, these twin brothers ac
complished great things, and Roger Bacon, the en
fant terrible of his time, in spite of his quarrels with
his fellow friars could not refrain from writing in
1271, with his usual exaggeration, that in forty

7 "... tanquam bruta animalia blasphemantia in iis quac igno
rant," In Epist. Beati Dionysii Areopagitae, Epist. VIII, No. 2.

s "Quidam fratres ejusdem ordinis praedicatorum ausi sunt se
publice jactitari doctrinam veritatis plus in suo ordine quam in alio
contemporaneo viguisse." Epistola ad cancellarium. Oxon., Decemb.,
1284-.

78 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

years no "secular" had written anything of any
value either in Philosophy or in Theology.9

The extreme fondness for philosophy, however,
which appears in the University of Paris during the
thirteenth century, is explained only in part hy the
acquired momentum, the influx of foreigners to
Paris, the place given to philosophy and theology
in the program of studies, and the feverish activity
of the impressive Dominican and Franciscan cor
porations with their remarkable masters. In addi
tion, and finally, we must consider the introduction
of new philosophical texts, which served as food
for individual reflection and for discussion arid for
writing.

It is hard for us adequately to realize what this
enrichment must have meant at that time. The
great treatises of Aristotle, — his Metaphysics, his
Physics, his Treatise on the Soul, works of which
doctors had spoken for five hundred years, but
which no westerner had read since the days of
Boethius — were brought to them from Greece and
from Spain. Xeo-Platonic works were added to
these, — principally the "Liber de Causis," written
by a compiler of Proems, and the "Elementa Tlie-
ologiae" of Proclus himself. Henceforth the West
knows the best that Greek thought had produced.
Nor is that all. Along with these works, the Paris-

o Compendium Studii, cap. V, cd. Brewer p. 428.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 79

ian doctors receive a vast number of commentaries,
made by the Arabs of Bagdad and of Spain. Fi
nally, they also come into possession of a large col
lection of Arabian and Jewish works, having their
sources in Alfarabi, Avicenna, Averroes, Avice-
bron, not to mention others.

All of these riches, in Latin translation, were
brought to Paris, to France, to England, to Italy,
to Germany ; and the study and evaluation of these
translations is one of the most difficult and far-
reaching problems connected with the history of
that age. In the last century, work on this great
problem was begun by eminent scholars; nor can
we even now say that it is solved. Will it ever be
solved? For, it continually enlarges as further in
sight into it is gained. But results have been ob
tained; and within recent years specialists of all
nationalities have taken the work in hand.98

We get some idea of the difficulties, with which
these scholars have to deal, when we recall that the
work of translation was accomplished in a century
and a half; that the Latin translations were made
from Greek works, pseudo-Greek works, and books
of the Jews and Arabs ; that the Greek works were
nearly all twice translated into Latin and in two
different ways, the one including the direct transla-

9" Menendez y Pelayo in Spain, Marches! in Italy, Vacant in
France, Mandonnet in Switzerland, Little in England, Charles Has-
kins at Harvard, Pelzer in Rome, besides a number of Germans
(such as Rose, Wiistenfeld and Gralmiann).

80 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

tions from the Greek and the other the translations
by a sort of caseade of intermediate languages
(Arabic and Hebrew and even the vernacular) ;
and, finally, that it was carried on in three main
centres, — in Greece itself, in the Greek speaking
countries of southern Italy (The Sicilies), and in
Spain. Often the same work was translated many
times and at different places; many were anony
mous or undated.

Through the three great frontiers raised between
West and East — Spain, Byzantium, Sicily — the
influence of these ideas is set in motion; but it is
especially through Spain that the influx is the
greatest. It is at Toledo, indeed, the most ad
vanced post of Christianity, and where the kings of
Castille are contending against the ever-menacing
invasion of the Mussulmans, that Christian civiliza
tion gives welcome to the science and philosophy
and art 'of the Arabs. There, in the Archbishop's
palace, was founded a college of translators who,
for three-quarters of a century, carried on this
formidable task, and indeed to a happy conclusion.
Englishmen, Italians, Frenchmen, and Germans
worked side by side with Jews and christianized
Arabs, under the encouragement and stimulus of
the two learned Archbishops, whose names are
worth}7 of being engraved on tablets of bronze,—
Raymond of Toledo and Rodriguez Ximenes.

The actual acquisition of so much new knowledge
was made by the masters of Paris in comparatively

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 81

rapid stages. Its elaboration, however, took longer.
The first who came in touch with it were dazed.
In addition to the Greek thought, which took time
to master, there was that further world swimming
into ken, so new and enchanting, the Oriental phi
losophy of the Arabian people; born of Neo-
Platonism, with its mystical, misleading concep
tions, and its profound idealism, this philosophy
was very different from the cold, clear speculation
of the Neo-Latins and Anglo-Celts.

It was not until 1270, or thereabouts, that the
West completed its elaboration of these foreign
treasures, and the initial chaos gave place to order
and equilibrium; it was then that Thomas Aquinas,
the great systematize!1 among the intellectual giants
of that age, laid hold of his opportunity and won
his secure place in the history of thought.

We are now ready to enumerate the general re
sults of the great network of causes which func
tioned in the philosophical development of the thir
teenth century. Among these general results we
shall confine our attention to two outstanding facts
which dominate the entire thought of the thirteenth
century, — like two high peaks towering above the
rest in a mountain range. On the one hand, there
is the predominance, in western Europe, of a great
system of philosophy, — the scholastic philosophy;
on the other hand, there is the impressive classifica-

82 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

tion of human knowledge. It is important now to
note carefully the significance of these facts; we
shall seek to analyze them in the chapters that fol
low.

First, then, the scholastic philosophy. Numer
ous philosophical systems rose up on every side as if,
as I said at the outset, a great variety of seed had
been scattered on fertile soil by some generous
hand. The thirteenth century is rich in personali
ties. But, among the numerous philosophical sys
tems to which the century gave birth, there is one
which overshadows and surpasses all others in its
influence. It is the scholastic philosophy. This is
the system of doctrines which attains the height of
its perfection in the thirteenth century, and to
which the majority of the ablest minds subscribe,—
such as William of Auvergne, Alexander of Hales,
Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus,
to mention no others. There is a great fund of
common doctrines, which each interprets in his own
way, following his individual genius; just as there
is also a common Gothic architecture, which appears
in a great many cathedrals, each of which expresses
its own individuality. This system of doctrines
constitutes the bincjing tie in an important school
of masters, who are thereby united like the mem
bers of a family. They themselves call it, in the
manuscripts of the period, the "sententia coin-
munis" the prevalent philosophy. This common
fund of doctrine, to which I was the first to limit

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 83

the name of "scholastic philosophy,"10 presents an
imposing mass of ideas.

To he sure, there were rival and opposing phi
losophies. Never, at any time in the history of
mankind, has contradiction lost its right. The
thirteenth century is full of clashes of ideas and
conflicts issuing therefrom. For instance, they ex
perienced the shocks of materialism, of Averroism,
and of Latin Neo-Platonism. Thus, Latin Averro
ism, which caused so much disturbance at the Uni
versity of Paris, about 1270, denies the individual
ity of the act of thinking, by asserting that all men
think through the instrumentality of a single soul,
the soul of the race.11 Again, the Neo-Platonic
philosophies, which appear in the schools of Paris,
deny all real transcendence of God by making crea
tion an emanation from God, that is to say a part
of God Himself.12 Very naturally, therefore,
against this common peril a coalition was formed,
both defensive and offensive; and a legion of war
riors, — such men as Roger Bacon, Bonaventure,
Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus — forgot their quar
rels and faced the common foe.

The scholastic philosophers of the thirteenth
century also exhibit reasoning superior to all the
systems which were trying to batter a breach in their
systems of thought. A celebrated painting of

10 Cf. my Hiatoire de l<t Philosoithie Mcdierale, pp. Ill ff.

11 See ch. XIII, iv.

12 See ch. XIII, v and vi.

84 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

the beginning of the fourteenth century, which is
preserved at Pisa, furnishes a striking confirmation
of this fact; for it reveals the recognition in society
at large that the scholastic philosophy was the pre
dominating philosophy of the time. The painter,
Traini, represents Thomas Aquinas as crowned in
glory and with Averroes at his feet crouching in
the attitude of a defeated warrior. The triumph
of Aquinas is the triumph of scholasticism, and the
defeat of Averroes indicates the defeat of the entire
Oriental and Arabian mentality. This painting of
Traini, celebrating the triumph of Thomism, be
came a theme of the studio, that is to say a common
opinion, a recognized fact.13 It is reproduced in a
host of well-known paintings. We find it splen
didly developed, by an unknown painter of the
Sienna school, in the Capitular Hall built by the
Dominicans in 1350, at Florence (Chapel of the
Spaniards). The subject attracted Gozzoli (in the
Louvre) ; the Spaniard Zurbaran (Museum of
Seville) ; then Filippino Lippi (Church of Mi
nerva, Rome), who in turn directly inspired Ra
phael's "Dispute of the Blessed Sacrament."1

The second great fact resulting from the intel
lectual life of the thirteenth century is the classifi
es See below ch. VII, ii, and ch. XIII, iv.

!* Gillet, Histoire artistique des ordres mendiants, Paris, 1912, pp.
139 ff.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 85

cation of human knowledge. All of the philosophi
cal system, — not only the dominating or scholastic
philosophy, but also those anti-scholastic systems
with which it was in perpetual struggle and con
tradiction — rested upon the conception of a vast
classification, a gigantic work of systematization,
the fruit of many centuries of speculation, and one
of the characteristic achievements of the mediaeval
mind. For more than a thousand years it has satis
fied thinkers a thirst for order and clarity. In what
does it consist?

One may compare it to a monumental structure,
to a great pyramid consisting of three steps, — with
the sciences of observation as the base, with philoso
phy as the middle of the structure, and with theol
ogy as the apex.14* Let us consider each of these
in order.

At the base are the natural sciences such as as
tronomy, botany, physiology, zoology, chemistry
(elements), physics (in the the modern sense of

i*" The general scheme is:

I. Particular sciences, such as botany, '/oology, etc
II. Philosophy. A. Theoretical a. Physics

b. Mathematics

c. Metaphysics

B. Practical a. Logic

b. Ethics

c. Social and political philosophy

C. Poetical

III. Theology. A. Doctrinal a. Scriptural (auctoritates)

b. Apologetical (rationed
B. Mystical

86 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

the word) ; and instruction in these precedes in
struction in philosophy. In this there is a very in
teresting pedagogical application of a ruling prin
ciple in the philosophical ideology of the Middle
Ages; that is that since human knowledge is con
tained in the data of sensation, the cultivation of
the mind must begin with what falls under the ob
servation of the senses; nihil est in intellectu quod
non prius fuerit in sensu.15 But more especially
there is implied, in this placing of the experimental
sciences at the threshold of philosophy, a concep
tion which inspires the scientific philosophies of all
times; namely, that the synthetic or total concep
tion of the world furnished by philosophy must be
founded on an analytic or detailed conception
yielded by a group of special sciences. These lat
ter study the world minutely; and for this reason
they are called special sciences. They investigate
the world in one domain after another; the phi
losophers of the thirteenth century speak clearly
concerning this method — the basis of the particu
larity of a science.

In every science, say the scholars of the thir
teenth century,16 it is necessary to distinguish the
objects with which it is concerned (materia) from
the point of view from which these objects are con-
is Sec oh. VIII, i.

is Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theol., la q. I, arts. 1-3, passim;
Contra Gentiles, II, 4; Henricus Gandavensis, Summa Theolog., art.
7, q. I-VI.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 87

sidered (ratio formalis) . The objects with which
a science is concerned are its material ; for example,
the human body constitutes the material of an
atomy and of physiology. But every science takes
its material in its own way; it treats this material
from some one angle, and this angle is always a
point of view upon which the mind deliberately
centers, an aspect of things which the mind sepa
rates out, — "abstracts" (abstrahit) from its ma
terial. Thus the point of view of anatomy is not
that of physiology; for anatomy describes the or
gans of the human body, while physiology is con
cerned with their functions. The point of view of
the one is static and of the other dynamic.

From this it obviously follows that two sciences
can be engaged with the same material, or — to bor
row the philosophical terminology of the Middle
Ages — possess a common material object (objec-
tum materiale) ; but they must possess in each case,
under penalty of being confused, a distinct point
of view, a unique formal object (objectum for-
malc) , which is the special "good" of each science.
And, indeed, whatever group of sciences we ma^
consider, we do, in fact discover everywhere the
operation of this law, regulating the distinctions
among the sciences; geology, inorganic chemistry,
and physics are concerned with the same object —
the inanimate world — but from different points of
view. Biology, paleontology, anatomy, and physi
ology study the organism but in its different as-

88 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

pects. The material common to political economy,
civil law, and criminal law is human action, but
each of these sciences regards the complete reality
of human action from a special angle. From this
intellectualistic conception of the sciences, which
bases the specific character of the science upon the
point of view, it follows that a new science must be
born whenever research and discovery reveal a new
aspect, a point of view hitherto unsuspected in the
unending pursuit of reality; the further the mind
extends its view of things, the further does it pene
trate into the secrets of reality.

This theory of science helps us to understand
what makes a science "special," and how in the thir
teenth century "special" sciences are opposed to
"general" science. The particularity of the sciences
rests upon two considerations which supplement
each other, and an examination of a few of the sci
ences which we have named as examples will suffice
to show in the concrete the value of these consider
ations. Anatomy and physiology, we said, are con
cerned with the human body, but they are not con
cerned about geological strata or stars. The ma
terial studied is a particular bit of reality; a re
stricted, specialized department or — to use again
the mediaeval terminology — their material object
(objectum materiale] is restricted. On the other
hand, precisely because anatomy and physiology
are concerned with only a particular group of ex-

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 89

istences, the point of view (objectum formale) un
der which they include this group of existences is
also restricted; it is not applied to other categories
of the real.

But, — and this is the second point — the detailed
examination of the world for which the special sci
ences take up particular positions does not suffice
to satisfy the mind; after the detail it demands total
views. Philosophy is simply a survey of the world
as a whole. The man of science is like a stranger
who would explore a city hit by bit, and who travels
through its avenues, promenades, museums, parks,
and buildings one after the other. When at last
he has wandered over the city in all directions,
there will still remain another way for him to be
come acquainted with it; from the height of a plat
form, from the summit of a tower, from the basket
of a balloon, from an aviator's seat, the city would
disclose to him another aspect, — its framework,
plan, and relative disposition of parts. But that
way is the way of the philosopher, and not of the
scientist. The philosopher is thus the man who
views the world from the top of a lookout and sets
himself to learn its structure; philosophy is a syn
thetic and general knowledge of things. It is not
concerned with this or that compartment of exis
tence, but with all beings existent or possible, the
real without restriction. It is not a particular but
a general science. General science or philosophy

90 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

constitutes the second stage of knowledge. It is
human wisdom (sapientia), science par excellence,

This generality has a twofold aspect; for in two
ways the general character of philosophy is op
posed to the special character of the particular
sciences. In the first place, instead of dealing with
one department of reality, philosophy plunges into
the immensity of the real, of all that is. Its mat
ter (material ohject) is not general of course in the
sense of an encyclopedia (as was supposed in the
early Middle Ages by Isidore of Seville and by
Rhabanus Maurus, or by Vincent of Beauvais in
the thirteenth century) into wrhich is thrown pell-
mell, and in a purely artificial order, a formidable
array of information in regard to all that is known
and knowable. An encyclopedia is not a science
and does not pretend to be. If philosophy deals
with all reality it does so by the way of viewing
things in their totality. But, in the second place,
these total views are possible only when the mind
discovers, in the totality of reality, certain aspects
or points of view which are met with everywhere
and which reach to the very depths of reality. To
return to the technical scholastic language, with
which we are familiar, its formal and precise object
is the study of something that is found everywhere
and which must J)e general because it is common to
everything. Philosophy is defined as the under-

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 91

standing of all things through their fundamental
and universal reasons.16'

The thirteenth century directs us to the signifi
cance of synthesis or generality which belongs to
philosophy, by taking up and completing Aristo
tle's famous division of philosophy, which was ac
cepted as valid down to the time of Wolff in the
seventeenth century. Philosophy is first, theoreti
cal, second, practical,, and third, poetical. This
threefold division of philosophy into speculative,
practical, and poetical is based upon man's differ
ent contacts with the totality of the real, or, as it
was put then, with the universal order.

Speculative or theoretical (Owpdv, to consider)
philosophy gives the results of acquaintance with
the world in its objective aspect; it includes the phi
losophy of nature, mathematics, and metaphysics,
which consider (consider at sed non facit) change,
quantity, and the general conditions of being, re
spectively, in the material world. There are three
stages through which the mind passes in order to
secure a total view of the world of which it is spec
tator. The Middle Ages defines physics, or the
philosophy of nature, as "the study of the material
world in so far as it is carried in the stream of
change, motus" Change! Whether, indeed, it is
a question of the inorganic kingdom or of the realm

IGR Thomas Aquinas, In Mefaph. I, lect. 2. "Sapientia est scientia
quac considcrat primas et universales causas."

92 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

of the living, of plants or of human life, of the
atom or of the coarse of the stars: all that is in the
sensible world, becomes, that is to say, changes,
evolves; or, to use the expression of the Middle
Ages, everything is in motion (movere). To
study, in its inmost nature, change and its implica
tions, in order to explain the movements of the ma
terial world, — this is the task of the philosophy of
nature.17 It is easy to see that this study is of a
regressive and synthetic kind, that it is general,
that is to say, philosophical, on account of the gen
eral character of the material investigated (ma
terial object), and the generality of the point of
view from which the inquiry is undertaken (formal
object). But through all their changes and trans
formations bodies preserve a common attribute, the
primary attribute of body — quantity — so that the
study of quantity forces us to penetrate reality still
further. Mathematics, which studies quantity as
regards its logical implications, was for the ancients
a philosophical and therefore a general science, and
in our day many scientists are tending to return to
this Aristotelian notion. Metaphysics enters deep
est of all into reality and deals with what is beyond
motion and quantity, — for the sole purpose of con
sidering the general determinations of being.

But practical philosophy is no less general in
character, although it is not concerned with the uni-

17 Be it observed that, since man is a part of the world of sense-
perception, psychology also belongs to physics.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 93

versal order in its objective reality, but with the
activities (^uTTeiv) of conscious life, through which
we enter into relation with that reality (considerat
faciendo) . Hence, as Thomas Aquinas explains,
practical philosophy is occupied with an order of
things of which man is at once spectator (since he
examines it by turning upon himself) and maker
(since he forms it through his conscious function,
that is, knowing and willing). Practical philos
ophy includes logic and ethics and politics,
Logic sets up a scheme of all that we know, of the
method of constructing the sciences; and there is
nothing that the human mind cannot know in some
imperfect way. Ethics studies the realm of our
acts, and there is nothing in human life that cannot
become the material of duty. Politics is concerned
with the realm of social institutions, and there is
nothing which has not its social side, since man is
made to live in society (animate sociale). Going-
more deeply into the analysis of practical philos
ophy, one might show that logic draws in its train
speculative grammar, for it invades the fields of
grammar and rhetoric — its former associates in the
trivium — to draw thence material for controversy.
Furthermore, Paris saw the birth of some true phi
losophers of language, in the speculative grammars
of Siger of Courtrai and of Duns Scotus ;18 and the

i8 The authenticity of the Grammatica specnlativa, attributed to
Duns Scotus, has been doubted. Ho\vever this may be, it is a re
markable work.

94 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

lexicographical codes of Donatus and Priscian
which had satisfied the twelfth century were finally
rejected with scorn. Logic, ethics, and politics all
claim to he in touch with the immensity of the re
ality with which man enters into relation.

The same quality of universality should pertain
to the third group of the philosophical sciences, the
poetical (TTOLW, to make) sciences, which study the
order achieved by man externally through the
guidance of reason. Man is at once the spectator
and maker of an order which he creates. But this
order is outside of him, in matter.19 This third
group is the least developed of all. It would seem
as if the human product par excellence, the work of
art, endowed witJi beauty, should here occupy a
large place. But the thinkers of the thirteenth cen
tury regard the productive activity of the artisan,—
maker of furniture or builder of houses- — as on the
same level with the human creative activity which
inspires epics and which makes cathedrals to rise
and stained windows to flame and granite statues
to live. Dante has no special thought of beauty,
when he speaks of the work of art, as "the grandson
of God."' The professional philosophers bury their
reflections on beauty in metaphysical studies;
hence the fragmentary character of their thought
in that realm. Possibly this omission as regards
aesthetic theory has its explanation in the corporate

ID f<y. Thomas Aquinas, In Ethic. Nicum., I, 1.

20 The Inferno, XI, 103, "... a Dio quasi nepote."

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 95

character of their labours. The artisan was devoted
to his calling ; and this devotion was such that every
artisan was, or might become, an artist. The dis
tinction between artcs liber ales and artes mechani-
cae did not rest upon any superiority of the artistic
activity as such, but upon the difference in the pro
cesses employed; both were possessed of the ratio
artis in like manner.20" Furthermore, we must bear
in mind that the contemporaries of an artistic apo
gee do not realize the significance of the develop
ment witnessed by them ; theories always come later
than the facts which they are meant to explain. In
any event, we should note how large and human is
the philosophical conception of art in the Middle
Ages; there is no work of man which it cannot
clothe in the royal mantle of beauty.

It remains only to mention the last order of stud
ies which is placed above philosophy, and which cor
responds, in the comparison that we have been mak
ing, to the highest part of the structure, to the apex
of the pyramid. This is theology, doctrinal and
mystical.21 The part relating to doctrines is an ar
rangement of dogmas founded upon the Christian
revelation, and we shall see later22 that it takes a
double form, — being both scriptural and apolo-
getical.

Theology aside, this classification of human

2o« "Nec oportet, si liberates artes sunt nobiliores, quod magis eis
conveniat ratio artis." Summa TheoL, 1» 2a°, q. LVII, art. 3, in fine.

21 For its place in the general scheme see above, p. 85.

22 See ch. VII.

96 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

knowledge is Aristotelian in origin. The Aristo
telian spirit appears not only in the very notion of
"science," which aims at unity; but also in the rela
tion between the particular sciences and philos
ophy. Since the latter rests upon the former, it re
mains in permanent contact with the facts; indeed,
it is anchored to the very rocks of reality. The
abundant harvest of facts, supplied by Greeks and
Arabians, was enriched by fresh observations in
physics (in the modern sense of the word), chem
istry (elementary), botany, zoology and human
physiology. Moreover, Thomas Aquinas and God
frey of Fontaines and others borrowed material
from the special sciences which were taught in the
other university faculties, notably from medicine
and from law (civil and canon). Facts about na
ture and about the physical and social man, — in
deed, observations from all sources — are called
upon to supply materials for the synthetic view of
philosophy. They all claim with Dominicus Gun-
dissalinus, that there is no science which may not
contribute to philosophy. Nulla est scientia quae
non sit aliqna pliilosophiae pars.23 Scholastic phi
losophy is thus a philosophy based upon science,
and it is perhaps not superfluous to observe that
we are now more than ever returning to these con
ceptions.

But in order to appreciate at their true worth the

23 De divisione J'hilosnpliiae, Prolngus, p. 5, edit. Banr (Baiim-
ker's-Beitrage, IV, 2-3).

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 97

applications made by the scholastics, we must make
a twofold reservation. First, facts were studied
much more for the purpose of furnishing material
for philosophy than for their own sake; hence the
Middle Ages never recognized the distinction be
tween common experience and scientific experi
ment, which is so familiar to us. Second, this ma
terial secured out of observation and experience,
represented a mixture, — a mixture of facts artifi
cially obtained and of exact observation. The
former necessarily lead to erroneous conclusions,
examples of which we shall see later.24 The latter,
however, were adequate for establishing legitimate
conclusions.

Finally, the Aristotelian spirit appears also in
the inner articulation of philosophy itself. During
the first centuries of the Middle Ages the Platonic-
division of philosophy into physics, logic, and ethics
had been in vogue ; and for a long time it persisted.
The thirteenth century definitely rejects it, or
rather absorbs it into new classifications. Com
pared with Aristotle — the most brilliant teacher
whom humanity has known — Plato is only a
poet, saying beautiful things without order or
method. Dante was right when he called Aristotle
"tlie master of those who know/' But to know is
above all to order; sapientis est ordinare, — it is the
mission of the wise man to put order into his knowl
edge. Even those who do not accept the ideas of
the Stagyrite acknowledge his kingship when it is

24 See oh. V, ii.

98 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

a question of order or clearness. "Three-quarters
of mankind," writes Taine,25 "take general notions
for idle speculations. So much the worse for them.
What does a nation or an age live for, except to
form them? Only through them does one become
completely human. If some inhabitant of another
planet should descend here to learn how far our
race had advanced, we would have to show him our
five or six important ideas regarding the mind and
the world. That alone would give him the measure
of our intelligence." To such a question the scho
lars of the Middle Ages would have replied by ex
hibiting their classification of knowledge, and they
would have won glory thereby. Indeed, it consti
tutes a remarkable chapter in scientific methodol
ogy, a kind of "introduction to philosophy," to use
a modern expression. Whatever may be one's
judgement regarding the value of this famous classi
fication, one must bow in respect before the great
ideal which it seeks to promote. It meets a need
which recurrently haunts humanity and which ap
pears in all great ages : the need for the unification
of knowledge. The thirteenth century dreamed of
it, as Aristotle and Plato did in ancient times, and
as Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer have done
in our day. It is a splendid product of greatness
and power, and we shall see in the chapters that
follow how closely bound up it is with the civiliza
tion to which it belongs.

25 Le pnsltivisme anglais, Paris, 1804, pp. 11, 1-2.

CHAPTER FIVE

UNIFYING AND COSMOPOLITAN TENDENCIES

i. Need of universality; the "law of parsimony." ii. Excess
resulting from the felt need of simplifying without limit; the
geocentric system and the anthropocentric conception, iii.
The society of mankind ("universitas humana") in its theo
retical and practical forms, iv. Cosmopolitan tendencies.

WE have seen that there are two outstanding re
sults of the various causes that make for the great
development of philosophy in the thirteenth cen
tury. On the one hand, there is the great classifica
tion of human knowledge, in which each science had
its own particular place — a pyramid of three stages,
or if one prefers the figure employed by Boethius.1
a ladder for scaling the walls of learning. On the
other hand, among all the clashing systems which
rest upon that classification, there is one system of
thought which prevails,- — that is scholasticism; and
it wins widest acceptance because it succeeds in re
ducing to one harmonious whole all of the problems
and their solutions.

Bearing in mind these two great facts, we shall
now proceed to show that they possess characteris
tics which are found in every sphere of the life of

i Boethius, De Consolalione Philosophiae, Lib. I, 1.

100 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

the times; and, indeed, as will appear, they are in
organic connection with all the other factors of
mediaeval civilization.

There is one fundamental characteristic, appear
ing in the scientific classification and the scholastic
philosophy, which is found everywhere; I mean the
tendency toward unity. The need of ordering
everything in accordance with principles of unity
and stability, the search for systems which extend
themselves over vast domains, is one of the con
spicuous marks of a century which saw in the large,
and which acted on a broad plan. Wherever we
turn, we find a prodigious ambition of initiators
and everyone dreaming of universal harmony.

The policy of kings was filled with this ambition.
For, at this time, the feeling for unity began to
vivify great states such as France and England and
Germany and Spain. Now, this unity could not
be realized except by introducing principles of
order, which would bring under a common regime
social classes scattered over vast territories, and
previously subjected to local and antagonistic pow
ers. The thirteenth century was a century of kings
who were all organizers, administrators, legisla
tors ; they were builders of stability, who all mould
ed their countries and their peoples: Philip Augus
tus and Louis IX in France; Edward I in Eng
land; Frederick II of Germany; Ferdinand III
and Alphonso X in Spain; all had these traits in
common.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 101

In France, localistic and centrifugal feudalism
became more and more feeble, and monarchical
concentration grew steadily stronger. This con
centration, which first appeared under Philip
Augustus, became more and more evident under
Louis IX, who perfected the work of unification
begun by his grandfather. A lover of justice, re
spectful of the rights of others, and jealous of his
own, he made no attempt to crush the feudal lords
or the cities. There was nothing despotic in his
rule, and he permitted all kinds of social forces to
develop themselves." His reign resembled the oak
under which he held his court of justice; for the
oak, the lord of the forest, likewise refrains from
stifling growths of more fragile structure which seek
protection under its shade.

Without attempting to establish a parallel be
tween the policy and social condition of France and
the neighbouring countries, one must recognize
that the stability realized by Louis IX recurs mu
tatis mutandis in England. When John Lackland
rendered to England "the inestimable service of
losing her French possessions,"3 the country organ
ized itself from within outward. The Magna
Charta of 1215 established a rule of liberty in favor
of the clergy and the nobility; it produced an equi
poise between the powers of the king and the repre
sentatives of the nation. Parliament came into be-

2 Luchaire, A., Louis VII, Philippe Auguste, Louis VIII, p. 203.

3 See F. Harrison, The Meaning of History, etc., 1916, p. 161.

102 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

ing. Intelligent princes, like Edward I (1272-
1307), completed the conquest of the Island and
perfected the national institutions.

Much the same thing occured in the Norman
kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and in the Catholic
kingdoms of Spain, which grew powerful at the
cost of the Arab states in the south of the penin
sula, and in which later the Cortes checked the royal
power. Like his relative Louis IX, Ferdinand
III, king of Castile, had the centralizing idea. lie
organized a central administration of the state ; and
only his death prevented him from achieving legis
lative unity, which would have consolidated the mo
saic of peoples living within the expanding confines
of Castile.*

But while in France, in England, in the Catholic
kingdoms of Spain, and in the Norman kingdom of
the south of Italy, royalty was gaining in influence,
the German Emperor was losing some of his power.
The result was that the two types of government in
the West, feudal particularism and German cen
tralized authority, steadily approached each other,
and the different European states became more like
a single family. The German barons, bishops, and
abbots were no longer the "valets" of the emperor;
the feudal nobility gained more independence; cities
began to show their power.

Even in Italy, which the German Emperors had

* Altamira, Historia de Espnnn y de la civilisation espagnola, 1913,
I, p. 385.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 103

so long claimed as their own, Frederic II, son of
Frederic Barbarossa, had to reckon with the Lom
bard cities which were powerful principalities, seek
ing to shake off his yoke. In his person the family
of the Hohenstaufen underwent defeat at the hands
of the Pope.

Above this process of beginning nationalization,
states which were striving towards an autonomous
national life, stood the Papacy, which assumed in
the person of Innocent III its most perfect me
diaeval expression. Its mission being above all
regulatory, the Papacy followed a religious and in
ternational policy whose effect on the whole century
will be defined later in this chapter.5 It was In
nocent III who affirmed the unitary role of the
Papacy in the political life of his age: he was the
first to set up as a right that which his predecessors
had practiced in fact — that is, the nomination of
the Emperor.5*

But politics, whether of kings or of popes, con
stitute only the body of civilization. Its inner
life circulates in religious and moral feelings, in
social, artistic, philosophical, and scientific doc
trines.

Christian dogma and Christian ethics permeated
the whole human fabric, no activity being exempted

5 See below iii.

5" See the Bull Venerdbilem: "jus et auctoritas examinandi per-
sonam electam in regem et promovendum ad imperium ad nos spec-
tat."

104 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

from their influence. They endued with a certain
supernatural sanction the life of individuals, fami
lies and peoples, who were all on a pilgrimage (in
via) towards the heavenly home (in patriam).
Christianity gave a spirit of consecration to the
workers in guilds, to the profession of arms (pro
vided the war was just), to ateliers of painters and
of sculptors, to the builders of cathedrals, to cloister-
schools and universities. The new religious orders
organized themselves in the new spirit of the age.
While the Benedictine monks belonged to a par
ticular abbey, as to a large family, the Dominicans
and Franciscans belonged far more to their order
as a whole, — they were delocalized, being sent out
for preaching like soldiers to a battlefield.6

Similarly, in the whole field of art there was the
same dream of universality, and the same attempt
to realize rigorously the ideal of order.

The Gothic cathedrals, which are the most per
fect flowering of mediaeval genius, amaze modern
architects with the amplitude of their dimensions.
"They were made for crowds, for thousands and
tens of thousands of human beings; for the whole
human race, on its knees, hungry for pardon and
love."7 At the same time, they astound the mod
ern student of art by the logic of their plan. To

8 Of. E. Baker, The Dominican Order and Convocation, Oxford,
Clarendon Press, 1913.

7 Henry Adams, op. tit., p. 367.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 105

make the edifice a mirror of nature, of the moral
world, and of history, architecture calls to its aid
sculpture, painting, and stained glass. Immense
shrines populate themselves with statues, with fig
ures of animals, plants, and foliage, with designs of
every kind. The visible world was a veritable re
flection of the thought of God for the mediaeval
artists ; hence they thought that all creatures might
find a place in the cathedral. Likewise, the cathe
dral is the mirror of science, and, in fact, all kinds
of knowledge, even the humblest, such as fitted men
for manual labor and for the making of calendars,
and also the highest, such as liberal arts, philosophy,
and theology, were given plastic form. Thus the
cathedral could readily serve as a visible catechism,
where the man of the thirteenth century could find
in simple outline all that he needed to believe and to
know. The highest was made accessible to the low
est. Architecture has never been more social and
popular at any other period of history.

As for literature, while the productions of the
thirteenth century do not rank with their monu
ments of stone, nevertheless they represent great en
deavor. A work like the Roman de la Rose is a
sort of encyclopedia of everything that a cultured
layman of the middle of the thirteenth century
ought to know. The Divine Comedy, a work which
has not been imitated and which is inimitable, is a
symphony of the whole time. Dante's stage is the
universe; he is a citizen of the world, and he in-

106 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

forms us that he writes "the sacred poem to which
heaven and earth put their hands."8

While the artists were thus giving birth to new
life in art, the intellectual classes were hungering
and thirsting to know all, to assemble everything
within the domain of knowledge, and, after having
completed the collection, to submit all to order.

There are different levels in that effort toward
order. At the lower level the encyclopedists ex
press the desire of the time for an inventory of all
that can be known. Thus Jacopo de Voragine, in
the Golden Legend, gathers together the legends
of the lives of the saints; William the bishop
of Mende collects all that has been said about the
Catholic liturgy. There are compilers like Bar-
tholomeus Anglicus, author of a treatise De Pro-
piietatibus. Above all there is Vincent of Beau-
vais, who wrote an enormous Speculum Quadru
ples, a veritable Encyclopedia Britannica of the
thirteenth century. Vincent calls attention to the
brevitas temporum which is at the disposal of his
contemporaries and to the midtitudo librorum
which they must read, in order to excuse himself
for giving his ideas on all possible subjects.9 Much
the same may be said of the work of the jurists of
Bologna and of the canonists — although doctrine
has begun to develop, and the unity of precision

8 Divina Commedia, Paradiso, XXV.

9 Speculum historiale, cap. I (vol. I inclinable, ed. Mentellini,
1473-6).

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 107

had made its appearance in their work. Thus, the
jurists compiled the various theories of Roman law.
The most famous of these jurists, Accursius who
died in 1252, united in an enormous compilation
(the Glossa Ordinaria) all the works of his prede
cessors. Ahout the same time, the legistcs of
Philip Augustus translated the corpus juris into
French; Edward I had a collection made of the
decisions of his courts of justice; and James I of
Aragon had a codification made of laws, called the
Canellas. Furthermore, the canonists, at the wish
of the Popes, continued the work of codification
begun by Gratian in his Decretum, and brought
together the decisions of the Popes (Decretales)
and the decisions of the councils.

But in comparison with the philosophers, the
encyclopedists, jurists, and canonists are as dwarfs
by the side of giants. The philosophers, as we have
seen,10 created that vast classification of human
knowledge, in which each kind of thinking found
its place, — and in doing so they showed themselves
to be, as lovers of order and clarity, in intimate sym
pathy with the demands of their time. Thus, all the
particular sciences in existence at the time, and all
those that might arise through a closer study of in
organic matter, or of the moral and social activities
of man, occupy a place in the plan, marked out in
advance.

But the shining example of this urgent need for

10 See above, ch. Ill, ii.

108 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

universality and unity appears in that massive sys
tem of thought which dominates and obscures all
its rivals,— namely, the scholastic philosophy.
Monumental Summae, collections of public lectures
called Quaestiones Disputatae, and monographs of
all kinds, display an integral conception of the
physical and moral world wherein no philosophi
cal problems are omitted. Questions in psychol
ogy, ideology, and epistemology; on the constitu
tion of matter and corporeal bodies ; on being, unity,
efficiency, act, potency, essence, existence; on the
logical construction of the sciences; on individual
and social ethics; on general aesthetics; on specula
tive grammar and the philosophy of language — all
of these vital philosophical questions receive their
answer. The particular sciences are all pressed in
to service for philosophy, and they supply it with
the facts and observations of concrete experience.
Even the intellectual activities of the jurists and
the canonists are also drawn within the scholastic
synthesis. The scholastics of Paris especially, in
their lectures and in their books, treat from their
specific standpoint certain questions which the jur
ists treat by reference to their technical demands.
For example, they commonly discuss and study
questions of private property, of burial, of the right
to make war, of the relations between Church and
State; but such questions are approached not from
the point of view of positive law, but rather from
that of moral and natural law. Thus, just as the

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 109

other departments of human knowledge furnish
their several quotas of material, so civil and canon
law bring their contributions.11 In this way, philo
sophical thought is endlessly extended, and philos
ophy becomes an explanation of the whole.

But not alone are all vital questions answered;
everywhere there is coherence, and in the full mean
ing of the word (<mmw*a), — so that one may not
withdraw a single doctrine without thereby com
promising a group of others. Everything hangs
together by implication and logical articulation;
everywhere appears to the utmost that consuming
desire for universality and order which lays hold of
the savants and leads them to introduce the most
comprehensive and rigorous schema possible.
Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and, to a less de
gree, Alexander of Hales and Bonaventure are
systematic minds; their philosophy is an intellec
tual monument, and the sense of proportion which
it reveals is the same as that of the Gothic cathedral
to which it has so often been compared. It is just
because everything is so fittingly combined in the
scholastic philosophy,12 and because it does satisfy
the mind's most exacting demands for coherence,
in which its very life consists, that it has charmed
through the ages so many successive generations of
thinkers.

We must also observe that scholastic philosophy

11 Cf. above, ch. IV, vi.

12 See below, ch. X, for an example of this doctrinal coherence.

110 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

accomplishes, by means of a limited number of
ideas, that doctrinal order to which it is so devoted.
It simplifies to the full limit of its power. Each
doctrine which it introduces possesses a real value
for explanation, and consequently it cannot be sa
crificed. Tims, to take only one instance, the
theories of act and potency, of matter and form, of
essence and existence, of substance and accident are
all indispensable to their metaphysics.1" For them,
philosophy as well as nature obeys the principle of
parsimony. Natura non abundat in superfluis,
writes Thomas Aquinas.14 Indeed, the thirteenth
century had already anticipated, in various forms,
that counsel of wisdom which is usually attributed
to William of Occam: not to multiply entities with
out necessity.15 In its moderation, indeed, schol-

13 Sec ch. IX.

uS-umma Tlicol., 1» 2«e, q. XCIV, art. 2. The Leonine edition of
the Siimnin contra G' entiles, following the original text of Thomas
(Rome, 1918), shows what pains the author took in this book to
realize the internal order I refer to. The deliberate omissions, the
additions, the studied improvements, — all of this reveals much labor.
Cf. A. Pelzer, "L'edition leonine de la Somme contre les Gcntils."
Revue Neo-S colas tique dc philosophic, May, 1920, pp. 221 ff.

ir' See below, p. 117, note 2:5, for an applieation of this prineiple
made by Dante to universal monarchy. Duns Seotus is familiar with
the prineiple. For a note on the formula: pluritas non est poncnda
sine necessitate, see Mind, July 1918, by Thorburn, who observes
that it docs not originate in Occam. It is in fact a formula which
moves through the whole thirteenth century, and which expresses
just the felt need of unity that engages us in this chapter. All
philosophers invoke this principle, and each adapts it to his own
doctrines.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 111

astic philosophy is like the thirteenth-century cathe
dral, which admits only those linear forms which are
required by the rationale of the structure. It was
not until the fourteenth century that those cumber
some theories appeared which weakened the doc
trine.

The same systematic character marks also the
theology of the time, which is simply a great group
ing of Catholic dogmas, each of which is consonant
with all the rest.

To sum it all up, then. Need of universality,
need of unity, need of order: the whole civilization
is athirst for them.

However, this passion for systematization, by its
very fascination, sometimes led the ablest philoso
phers to excess, — and herein lies a reason for a cer
tain peculiarity of the mediaeval mind. So great
was this felt need of ordering things, that some
times, in the lack of reasons to prove, recourse was
had to fiction to please.

The astronomico-philosophical conceptions of
the thirteenth century furnish a striking example
of this fact. For the men of the time the earth is
the centre of the universe, and man is the lord of
the earth. The moon and the planets are conceived
as fixed in .their divers and distant spheres and as
describing their revolutions around the earth; with
laborious care they seek to reconcile this conception

112 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

with the apparent movements of the heavens. As
regards the fixed stars, they form the last sphere
of the world, beyond which "place or locus exists
no more," following the assertion of Aristotle,—
they think of them as held permanently in place by
nails of gold in a sky of crystal, which the divine
intelligences cause to revolve in their daily courses
around this earth of ours, and around man who, in
the last analysis, is the reason d'etre of all. And
here follows a series of postulates which are made
simply to satisfy their demand for synthesis,—
postulates which rest not on fact but on feeling.
Thus, for example, it is thought to be fitting that
the heavens, so impressive in their eternal mystery,
should be made of an essence superior to anything
here below. And being superior, it is equally fitting
that they should have an influence upon terrestrial
objects and direct human affairs. Does not the
superior, writes Thomas Aquinas, command the in
ferior? The very order of things demands it. Or,
once again, since unity is a more perfect tiling than
plurality, and creation is perfect, one must there
fore believe in the unity of creation; consequently
a plurality of worlds is rejected as discrediting the
work of God. Undoubtedly men of clear vision
saw through this fragile and nai've conception of
the structure of the world; certainly in a few well
known passages,10 Thomas Aquinas and his dis-

IB Thomas Aquinas, In lib. II de Coelo, lectio 17. About 1322 an
unknown teacher taught the following at Paris: quod si terra move-

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 113

ciple Giles of Lessines observe that the geo-centric
system is only an hypothesis, and that the celestial
movements are perhaps susceptible of explanation
by theories yet to be discovered by man. To be
sure, Thomas minimizes the influence of the action
of the heavens ; he restricts this action to the dispo
sition of the human body, and rejects any such ac
tion upon the intellect and the will." Nevertheless,
the astronomico-philosophical doctrines are admit
ted as parts of the whole, because their incorpora
tion satisfies the need of unity. Moreover, they are
necessary for a proper understanding of their
magic and alchemy, — or, again, of the interdiction
by the University of Paris against the astrology
of Koger Bacon, who exaggerated its directive in
fluence in human affairs.

Ill

There is yet another mediaeval doctrine which
sounds strangely to our modern ears, and which
furnishes a further interesting example of their

retur et ooelum quiesceret, esset in mundo melior dispositio (cf. P.
Diihem, "Francois de Mayronnes et la rotation de la terre," Archi-
vum Fransciaanum Historicum, 1913, pp. 23-25). Nicholas of Ores-
mes taught the same doctrine about 1362, — over a hundred years
before the birth of Copernicus (1473).

It is important to observe, that in regard to astronomical questions
the scholastics of the thirteenth century had more liberal ideas than
had their successors of the seventeenth century. The latter refused
to acknowledge the evidence of the discoveries made by the tele
scope, — and thus they helped to discredit the very philosophy of
which they were such unworthy successors.

"• Summa Theol., 1» 2ae, p. IX, art. 5.

114 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

felt need of ordering things. I refer to their dream
of a universal brotherhood, which they hoped to
realize hy organizing a kind of Christian republic,
—a republic which should embrace all mankind.

If we wish to understand this "society of man
kind," to grasp its essential point, we must more
than ever think directly in the mental terms of the
time. Let us look then at this universitas humana
through the eyes of Dante the poet, Thomas Aqui
nas the philosopher, and Innocent IV the canonist.
We shall find that in its theoretical form it is a bril
liant manifestation of the centripetal tendencies of
the time; and that also in its practical form it ap
pears in a garb which well suits the thirteenth cen
tury.

God created all beings; all beings are subject to
His providence. He is the Sovereign, the King of
the universe. Everywhere in His kingdom there is
a certain fixed hierarchy and order; yet in such
wise that all depends upon Him and tends toward
Him. The angels, who are pure spirit, are ar
ranged in degrees of perfection, but are all in His
service and contemplate His infinitude. Man, who
is spirit united with matter, dwells in a corporeal
space, the earth, awaiting a future day when he
shall realize the supernatural destiny which the re
demption of Christ has assured him.

Just as the earth is the centre of the universe,
so man is the lord of the earth. He is the end of
creation, and the most perfect image, here below,

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 115

of God. Man is like a little world, a microcosmos.
In the words of Dante as spokesman for his age.
man resembles the horizon where two hemispheres
seem to meet.18 Made to be happy — for, all beings
strive toward happiness — man has a twofold des
tiny : a temporal end, which he must realize here on
earth, and a supernatural end, in which he obtains
a perfect vision and love of God, but the right of
approach to which he must gain' in this life. Now,
he cannot attain this temporal end and prepare
himself for the supernatural end, unless he lives in
society. Without society, he cannot meet the re
quirements of the material life, nor develop suffi
ciently his personality. He is a social animal, "ani
mal politicum"1

The ideal, as Augustine says in the City of God,
would be to have society on earth an exact copy of
the divine city where all is peace and unity. In re
spect to political groups that are larger than the
family, it would be best that there should be but
one in the whole world. But such unity is impos
sible, because of discussions among men; masses of
men, like masses of water, are the more dangerous
the more abundant they are.20 If there were no

is "Recte a philosophis assimilatur horizonti qui est medium du-
orum hemisphaeriorum," De Monarchia, L. III.

is See below ch. X, iii.

20 Post civitatem vel urbem sequitur orbis terrae, in quo tertium
gradum ponunt societatis humanae, Sncipientes a domo atque inde
ad urbem, deinde ad orbem progrediendo venientes: qui utique, sicut
aquarum congeries, quanto major est, tanto periculis plenior. DC
Civitate Dei, XIX, ch. 7.

116 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

other reason, divergence in language alone would
be sufficient cause of dissension — hominem alienat
ab hominc — for a man has a better under standing
of his dog than of another man who does not under
stand his language. So, different kingdoms are re
quired, and the rivalries between these involve wars
and all their attendant evils.

The philosophers, theologians, canonists, jurists,
and publicists of the thirteenth century reproduce
all these doctrines of the City of God, which pos
sessed such a fascination for the whole of the Mid
dle Ages. But they wish to correct the defects
arising from the plurality of the states, by a unify
ing theory, the universal community of men, liu-
mana univcrsitas, as Dante says.21 They wish, at
any cost, to recover, in spite of the several king
doms, a unity of direction, such as guides the revo
lution of the spheres, the general government of the
universe.22

No one at that time doubted that man had a
double end to fulfill; and consequently everybody
admitted that there must be in human society
two kinds of rule, — a temporal and a spiritual. The
spiritual hierarchy is very clearly constituted:
above the groups in parishes, directed by the rec-

21 De Monarchic!, Lib. I.

22 Ilumanum genus cst filius coeli quod est perfectissimum . . .
Et cum coelum totuin unico motu, scilicet primi mobilis et unico
mntore qui Deus cst, rcguletur, etc. Ibid.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 117

tors, are the bishops; above the abbeys directed by
the abbots are the heads of the order; above all is
the Pope, who represents Christ on earth. As for
the temporal domain, above single states which
were in process of formation, and which, for the
most part, were governed by kings, the theorists
proclaimed the rights of a Single Monarch. This
was a political postulate. It was the Caesarian
dream which, from the time of Charlemagne, had
haunted the mediaeval mind, and which was never
more brilliantly defended.

One may read, in the De Monarchia of Dante,
the weighty considerations which the philosophical
poet urges in defense of the universal monarchy,
the political panacea which was to restore the
golden age on earth. A single monarch, raised
above the different kings of feudal Europe, was re
quired to effect the unification of human society.
There was no other method of establishing unity
among the scattered groups of human kind, of sub
ordinating the parts to the interest of all.23

After introducing these philosophical considera
tions, Dante enters upon the practical bearings of
the problem. This is, he says, the only method of
avoiding contentions in the world. Since he would
be the most powerful ruler on earth, the Single

23 Constat quod totum humane genus ordinatur ad unum . . . Partes
humanae universitatis respondent ad ipsam per unum principium. . . .
Humanum genus potest regi per unum principem . . . quod potest fieri
per unum melius est fieri per unum quam per plura. Lib. I, passim.

118 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

Monarch must necessarily be just, and exempt
from all covetousness, — just as Plato's ideal philos
opher by very conception must practice justice.
For, his jurisdiction would not be like those of the
kings of Castile and Aragon, whose kingdom is
limited; quite the contrary, he would rule from
ocean to ocean.

Not that the universal monarch need occupy him
self with each municipality. There needs must be
a number of kingdoms ; for the Scythians, who live
in a country where the days and the night are un
equal, cannot be ruled by the same laws as the
Garamantes who live at the equinox. Still there
are interests common to all peoples, and these can
be entrusted only to a single ruler.24 The universal
monarch should therefore occupy himself above all
with universal peace, and it is from him that the
kings of the single states should receive rules for
their conduct with this end in view. Once more re
curring to a philosophical comparison, but in poeti
cal form, he says that this rule of conduct, to insure
harmony among mankind, should be prescribed by
the monarch to the individual kings, just as the
speculative intellect furnishes to the practical in
tellect the principles which guide our actions.23

24 Ut humamim genus secunclum sua cominunia quae omnibus
competunt ah co regatur et comnnmi regula guhcrnetur ad pacem.
Ibid.

25 Constat quod totiim humane genus ordinatur ad unum . . .
Partos humanae universitatis respondent ad ipsam per unum prin-
cipiuin. . . . Humanum genus potcst regi per unum principem . . .
quod pote.it fieri per unum melius cst fieri per unum quam per plura.
Lib. I, passim.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 119

And Dante's conclusion is that, just as a man's
peace with himself is the condition of his personal
happiness, so likewise universal peace, pax univer-
salis, can alone realize the happiness of the human
race. Apart from this, Dante says nothing as to
the functions of this guide, arbiter, and judge.
But he does say who this monarch shall be. He is
to be the German Emperor, consecrated by the
Pope, and regarded by Dante as the heir of the
Caesars and of Charlemagne.26

But another question created a divergence of
views between canonists and legists. We mention
it only because it concerned this centripetal ten
dency of the time, this fascination of unity; and
because, too, one of the best known quarrels of the
thirteenth century seems to us clearly connected
with the philosophical controversy about this ideal
human society. The Empire and the Papacy be
ing distinct, and involving two heads, there was
again a new duality which must be reduced at any
cost to an inclusive unity.

Canonists, such as Innocent IV, and Johannes
Andreae, proclaimed the subordination of the Em
peror to the Pope, that is, of the temporal power
to the spiritual. Christ, they said, is the sole King
of humanity, and the Pope is his viceroy on earth.
Emperors and kings cannot exercise temporal

20 De Monarchic, Lib. III.

120 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

power except by a delegated authority which is al
ways revocable, — so that "the principle of separa
tion was applicable merely to the mode in which
those powers were to be exercised."2

Not so, replied Dante with all the legists. We
are as desirous as you are of introducing unity of
command over mankind, but this unity is the effect
of a co-ordination between two distinct powers,
each of which proceeds directly from God.28 "Im-
perium et Papae acque prindpaliter sunt constituti
a Deof and "imperium non depcndet ab ecclesia"'
are the shibboleths of the legists. At best, adds
Dante, since temporal felicity is subordinated to
the eternal, the Emperor owes a certain kind of
respect to the Pope, just as there is an obligation
upon the eldest son to ensure a respectful under
standing between himself and the head of the
family.30

Thus, for the legists as well as for the canonists,
human society is conceived as a single association
in which order prevails throughout.

Did the theory of the universal monarchy as
maintained by the legists, and the theory of the
omnipotence of the Pope as defended by the canon
ists, remain nothing more than a subtle academical

27 Gierke, Political Theories of il\e Middle Ayps (English trans
lation by F. W. Mailland), Cambridge, 1900, p. 12.

2»/)r Monrtreli'ta, Lib. III.

20 Gierke, op. cit., p. 17 and note 40.

so Ilia igitur reverentia Caesar utatur ad Petnnn qua primngeni-
tus filius debet uti ad Patron. Lib. HI.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 121

thesis? Or did they descend from theory to living
practice? History gives the reply to these ques
tions, and it is sufficient briefly to recall the facts.

Under the name of the Holy Roman Empire, the
Emperors of Germany sought to establish a hege
mony over the peoples of the West. They main
tained, as Dante teaches us,31 that they were the
heirs of Charlemagne, and that they were thus the
heirs of the Roman Caesars. Hence their claims to
the right of dominating Italy and of dictating to
the princelings (reguli) of the West. Hence also
the enforced claim, by the ambitious dynasty of the
Saxons, and by the even more ambitious dynasty of
the Hohenstaufen, of the right to nominate the
bishops, the abbots, and even the Pope.

Everyone knows what the result was. At Ca-
nossa (1077) Gregory VII breaks the power of
Henry IV, and delivers the bishops and the Papacy
from the will of the Emperors; a century later
Alexander III resists the claims of Frederic Bar-
barossa; a few years thereafter, Innocent III re
verses the roles, and disposes of the imperial crown
to whomsoever he will. During the course of the
thirteenth century, the Emperor, in the person of
Frederic II, is definitely defeated. The kings of
Europe, however, continue vigorously their resis
tance to the interference of the Emperors. And
even as late as the beginning of the fifteenth cen
tury, Antoninus of Florence points to the same fact,

si Ibid., Lib. II, III.

122 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

when he says: "Although all the secular lords and
kings should be subjected to the Emperor, there
are, however, many kings who do not recognize him
as their superior, invoking either a privilege or an
other kind of right, or the simple fact, as for in
stance the King of France, the doge of Venice and
certain other lords."3 It might be added, that the
German Emperor was not the only one who as
serted a right to the title of heir of Charlemagne,
and that certain kings — for instance Louis VII of
France — laid claim, though in vain, to the same
right. At all events, the Hohenstaufen did not
succeed in playing the role of peacemakers, such as
Dante assigned to the universal monarch. Far
from being agents of peace, they passed their lives
in making wars in all possible directions. Pan-
germanic supremacy in the thirteenth century suf
fered complete bankruptcy.

The fact was that the true agents of internation
alism were the Popes, the representatives of the
theocracy, which attained during the thirteenth
century its greatest extent of authority. The kind
of internationalism imposed by the Popes upon
Christian nations, which were indistinguishable
from the civilized w^orld, was based upon the catho
licity of the Christian faith and morality, and upon

3- "Quum oinnes domini ct reges seculares deberent csse sub Im-
peratore, miilti tainen rcges non oognoscunt cum lit superiorem
suum, tuentes se vel privilegio, sive alio jure vel pothis de facto, ut
rex Franciae et dux Venetian™ et alii domini." Summa Theologica,
Titulus III. De dominis temporalibus, C. 1.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 123

the discipline of the Roman Church. Catholicity
means universality. One head recognized hy all is
the guardian of the great ideal by which the society
of the time is* guided. Gregory VII had already
planned the deliverance of Jerusalem and the re
storation of the Church of Africa.33 His successors
organized and encouraged the Crusades. Innocent
III made use of the new mendicant orders for in
ternational and Catholic purposes. Doubtless
there were plenty of heresies after the middle of
the twelfth century; they underlay society like the
ground-swell of the ocean, not breaking through
to the surface. The thirteenth century had not yet
heard the warnings of the great displacements
which were to come, arid the Catholic faith pre
served its internationalism, thanks to the prestige
of the Papacy.

As guardian of the faith and morality of the
time, the Pope was also absolute master of disci
pline. The most autocratic form of the pontifical
authority was attained by Innocent III. He in
tervened time and again in the government of the
individual dioceses. All kinds of cases could be
brought before him; his decisions were universal
and supreme.34 Innumerable appeals were made
to his decisions. The moment came when Innocent
III thought he could restore the schismatic Church

S3 Rocquain, La cour de Rome et I'esprit de Reforme avant Luther.
vol. I. "La Theocratic, apogee du Pouvoir Pontifical," Paris, Thorin,
1893, p. 48.

si Ibid., 54, 412; Rocquain, La papautc au moyen age, 1881, p. 162.

124 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

of the Orient to his obedience. He could see upon
the episcopal throne of Constantinople a patriarch
who recognized his authority. The Serbs and the

CTJ •/

Bulgarians did him homage, and it* seemed for a
moment that the Russians would follow their ex
ample.

At this point, it is clear that the Pope not only
affirmed his super-national role, as head of the
Church, but also his role as arbiter of European
politics, and as the guardian of international mo
rality. He did not limit himself to the defense
and extension of the temporal patrimony, but pro
claimed himself the sovereign of all Christendom,
by invoking the principle "that the church has the
supreme right over the countries upon which she
has conferred the benefit of Christian civilization."
"Christ," as Gregory VII wrote in 1075, "substi
tuted his reign on earth for that of the Caesars, and
the pontiffs of Rome have ruled more states than
the Emperors ever possessed."3 By virtue of this
doctrine, his successors recognize kings, or absolve
their subjects from their duties of obedience; they
confer feudal possessions; they make themselves the
judges of the election of the German Emperors;
they receive the homage of the great of the earth;
those smitten with excommunication tremble with
fear.

This political supremacy was far from being

35 Ep. II, 75. Cf. Rocquain, op. cit., p. 54.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 125

pleasing to all the secular princes. History is
filled with the record of their resistance; and every
one knows the reply which Philip Augustus made
to the legates of Innocent III: "The Pope has no
right to interfere in the affairs which take place be
tween kings."3 But even when rising against the
Popes, kings respected the Papacy. We see this
clearly when Innocent protested against the divorce
by Philip Augustus of his first queen, excommuni
cated the king, and obliged him to take back his
lawful wife. Although in various other cases he
abused his authority, this act of the Pope, in con
demning the violation of the moral law by a great
king, is one of the noblest instances of the exercise
of his theocratic power. Likewise, he was respected
when he intervened to prevent wars which he held
to be unjust, and when he resorted to arbitration in
order to put an end to dispute. Over the society
of states as well as that of individuals he exercised
supreme authority. "Each king has his kingdom,"
wrote Innocent III, "but Peter has the pre-emi
nence over all, inasmuch as he is the vicar of Him
who governs the earth and all that is therein."37

After this statement of historical facts, it seems
superfluous to point out that the humana universi-
tas of the thirteenth century did not constitute a
society of nations in the modern sense of the term.

36 Paul Janet, Ilistoire de la science politique dans ses rapports
avec la morale, Paris, 1887, vol. I, p. 350.

37 Rocquain, op. cit., p. 358.

120 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

It could not be more than a society of the Euro
pean states as they then existed, each more or less
unformed and including heterogeneous races and
diverse languages.38

Augustine has left to us this fine definition of
peace: it is order which gives us tranquillity, pax
omnium reriim tranquiUitas ord'uiix™ Once every
thing is in place, and each thing is as it ought to
he, a grateful repose hovers over all. The whole
thirteenth century is under the influence of this
formula. All the human sciences, present and to
come, have their place marked out in the classifica
tion of knowledge; all the problems of philosophy
had engaged them, and they had been worked out
and co-ordinated in the dominating scholastic phi
losophy; all that art could endow with beauty was
reassembled in the cathedrals; all the great social
factors which enter into the life of a state were
combined in equilibrium ; and the theorists dreamed
of a universal society of mankind. Everybody be
lieved, and believed with conviction, that the world
had arrived at a state of repose as the end of its
destined course. To them as to the contemporaries
of Augustus, or of Louis XIV, a stability ap
proaching close to perfection seemed to have been
attained. A general feeling of content prevailed,
and this state of complacency continued for a full
hundred years after the middle of the thirteenth
century.

38 Compare below eh. XI.

3'J De Civilale Dei, Lib. XIX, cap. 13.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 127

In the light of this tendency toward unity, we
can hetter understand another aspect of the mediae
val civilization; an aspect which permeates all de
partments of their social life, and which appears
also in the two outstanding facts of their philoso
phical activity already noticed. This other aspect
is: cosmopolitanism, — their tendency to evaluate
by a universal standard.

The classification of knowledge which we have
referred to40 is not a matter of some individual con
ception, as was the effort made by Auguste Comte
or Ampere or Herbert Spencer; on the contrary,
the results are accepted by the general consensus
of learned opinion.

The twelfth-century groping has disappeared,—
the attempts of Radulfus Ardens, and even of the
Didascalion of Hugo of St. Victor, and of the
numerous anonymous classifications of that cen
tury. The treatises of the thirteenth century deal
definitely with methodology. Thus, for example,
the DC divisionc philosophiae*1 which Dominions
Gundissalinus wrote at Toledo about 1150 under
the influence of Aristotle and the Arabs, pursues
in detail the relation of the sciences to philosophy
and the superposition of the various branches of
philosophy. And the work of Michael Scot, one of

<° Seo above ch. IV, v.

41 L. Baur, "Gundissalinus, De divisione philosophiae," Baiimker's-
Beitrdge, 1903, IV.

128 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

his successors at the Institute of Toledo, is inspired
by the ideas of Gundissalinus. Again, there was
the important work of Robert Kilwardhy, the De
ortu ct divisionc pliilosopliiae*2 (written ahout
12,50, and perhaps the most noteworthy introduc
tion to philosophy produced in the Middle Ages) ;
this work perfects the outline of his master of To
ledo, and while it introduces certain distinctions, it
adds nothing new, and does not pretend to do so.
Further, the same classification is found in the
Compildtio dc libris naturaUbus,^' written by an
anonymous author of the thirteenth century, which
makes a place therein for the works of Aristotle
and of the Arabians; and the plan therein fol
lowed is in accord with the programme of the Uni
versity of Paris which wras published in 125.5. 44

In short, one finds the same classification in all
the writers of the period, — in Robert Grosseteste.
Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Siger of Brabant,
Duns Scotus, Roger Bacon and others; their
knowledge is all run into the same mould. Dante
refers to this classification at the beginning of his
treatise De Monarchia. It exists not only in the
programme of studies at the University of Paris, but

4- L. Baur, "Die philosophische Worke des Robert drosseteste,
Bischofs von Lincoln," Raumker'ls-Beitr(ige, 1912, IV.

43 M. Grabmann, "Forschungen iiher die lateinischen Aristoteles-
iihersetzungen des XITI .Tahrhunderts," Baiimker's-Beitrage, 1916,
XVTI, h. 5, G.

44 See further my study: "The Teaching of Philosophy and the
Classification of the Sciences in the Thirteenth Century," Philosophi
cal Review, July, 1918.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 129

it is found also at Oxford and at Cambridge;-—
moreover, it is the basis of private instruction. I
have found it also in a treatise as yet unedited, the
Speculum divinorum et quorumdam naturalium
which was written toward the end of the thirteenth
century, by Henry Bate of Malines, for the use of
Count Gui of Hainaut, whose instruction he had
undertaken; it is one of the few pedagogical treat
ises of that century written for the use of a lay
prince.45 This classification constitutes the frame
work for the various doctrines; and, indeed, such
divergent philosophical systems as those of Tho-
mism and Averroism, for example, are readily in
cluded within it, — much as plants essentially differ
ent may grow in the same soil. It is, so to speak,
the atmosphere in which all the systems are im
mersed, the common mental life which hovers over
systems and parts of systems. It was not the habit
in those days for one set of thinkers designedly to
destroy the presuppositions built up by another
set; they lacked that spirit of negation which later
became so characteristic of modern philosophers.

This cosmopolitan tendency in evaluating was
also the result of the remarkably widespread agree
ment witli the one dominant philosophy, — that is,
the scholastic philosophy. This great system had
its rise at Paris, the "cosmopolis of philosophy,"
and there, after a crisis in its development, it at-

45 See my study: "Henri Bate de Malines" (Bulletin de L'Acadt-
mie royale de Belgique, 1907).

130 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

tained its full growth and displayed the plenitude
of its power. The existence of this common centre
of learning, especially of speculative thought, con
tributed in a large measure to safeguard for a cen
tury and a half the unity of doctrine. From Paris
this philosophy spread in great waves to Oxford
and Cambridge, to Italy, to Germany, to Spain
and everywhere. Borne on the wings of French in
fluence, it became international. It reunited the
numerous host of those who were loyal to philoso
phy, and so it can lay claim to the greatest names,—
in England, Alexander of Hales and Duns Scotus,
in Italy, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, the
Flemish Henri of Ghent, and the Spanish Lully,
each of whom gave it his own interpretation and
marked it with his own personality. Thus, the en
tire West accepted the same explanation of the
world, the same idea of life. Of course the same
was true for theology, both speculative and mysti
cal. Such unity of thought has seldom existed in
the history of mankind. It occurred in the third
century of our era, — at the time of the glory of the
Neo-Platonic philosophy. And since the thirteenth
century, this phenomenon has never repeated it
self.

Far from being an anachronism, this remarkable
fact of universal agreement in the West satisfies the
profound aspirations of the time. For, there was
one system of education for princes, lords and
clerks; one sacred and learned language, the Latin;

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 131

one code of morals; one ritual; one hierarchy, the
Church; one faith and one common western interest
against heathendom and against Islam; one com
munity on earth and in heaven, the community of
the saints ; and also one system of feudal habits for
the whole West. Customs, characteristic of the
courtesy and chivalry which were born in France
in the preceding century, had spread to all coun
tries, and had created among the nobility of the
various nations a sort of kindred spirit. The net
work of feudalism embraced all social classes, and
everywhere the system had common features. The
Crusades had taught the barons to know each other.
Commerce, also, established points of contact be
tween the French and the English and the Flem
ish and the Italians, and predisposed men to a
mode of thinking, which was no longer local.
Everywhere work was organized on the principles
of guild and corporation.

The rapid expansion of Gothic art is another ex
ample of the felt need of a conception of beauty not
limited to any one people. A marvelous architec
ture and sculpture saw the light of day in the Isle
of France. The cathedrals of Sens, Noyon, Sen-
lis, Laon, Notre Dame de Paris, Chartres, Aux-
erre, Rouen, Rheims, Amiens, Bourges were then
either in process of building or completed. The
garland of masterpieces, begun under Louis VII
in northern and central Europe, and by Henry II
Plantagenet in the West, was completed and en-

132 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

riched under Philip Augustus; and the forms of
the pointed arch attained then a purity and a
beauty which have never been surpassed. The new
style of art passed almost immediately to the Eng
lish cathedrals of Canterbury, Lincoln, Westmin
ster, and York. In Spain, the cathedral of Burgos
(1230) was inspired by that of Bourges; the cathe
dral of Toledo was due to a French architect; the
cathedral of Leon, the most perfect of all, was built
on the basis of French ideas; — and the same is true
also of the German Gothic style generally, — thus,
for example, the cathedrals of Minister, Madge-
burg, Cologne, and Bamberg were patterned after
French standards, and the pointed arch is definitely
called "French style" by the builders of the Wimp-
fen cathedral, opus francigenum.*9 As Male has
so well shown, the new art became "oecumenical."47
We also observe a kind of uniformity, the cos
mopolitanism of which we have been speaking, in
the political institutions of the European states
which were then in process of formation. Every
where this process proceeds on the same general
principle, — the feudal monarchy, a representative
system of government.

*r> Compare the interesting work of E. Male, L'nrt nllemand et
I'd ft francnift du moi/en fif/e, Paris, 1917. At Wimpfen, the priest
Richard summons an architect "qui tune noviter de villa parisiensi
e partilms venerat franciae, opere francif/cno busilicam e sectis lapicl-
ilnis oonstnii jubct," p. 148.

47 Male, I/art rcliffieiix (hi 13° slide en France, p. 5.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 133

Finally, as we have already seen,48 the Popes
were genuine cosmopolitan forces of a practical
kind; for in their view the society of mankind was
to be extended universally.

In conclusion, it should he stated, the foregoing
does not imply that the mentality of the thirteenth
century was on a dead level of uniformity. By no
means. Human nature is always complex; and no
matter how general a phenomenon may he in any
condition of society, there always arise by the side
of it certain secondary phenomena of a contradic
tory character. Of these account should of course
be taken, — but without exaggerating their signifi
cance or bearing. It will always be true that moth
ers in general love their children, notwithstanding
the fact that some heartless mothers exist. Just so,
respect for authority was prevalent in the thir
teenth century, in spite of the evidence of some
germs of rebellion against the discipline of the
Church and the power of the State. The unity of
the catholic faith was not prejudiced by the various
heresies and superstitious practices ; nor did the ex
cesses of some barons 'weaken the virtues of the
feudal customs. The protests of a small group of
zealous mystics against the rich decoration of the
churches did not annul the delight of the whole
age with the beauty of their original art; nor did
the low morality of some of the clergy serve as a
general detriment to the purity of life in that class,

48 See above, pp. 122-126.

134 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

The spirit of the Middle Ages cannot be gath
ered accurately out of a mere catalogue of anec
dotes, nor from the exclusive perusal of satirists,
preachers and fable-writers, nor again from the his
tory of certain chroniclers and writers, whose tem
perament or office might prompt them to exagger
ate. On the contrary, the real task and point is to
ascertain whether these facts and anecdotes and
caricatures (whose name is legion) describe the
usual or the exceptional instances; whether they
are mainly characteristic of the period ; and whether
they reach and express the real depths of the me
diaeval soul.

So also in philosophy, a few isolated instances of
scepticism do not derogate from the general doc
trinal assurance which is characteristic of the me
diaeval philosophers. And similarly the great
number of systems of thought, and the atmosphere
of emulation in which they were conceived, can be
readily reconciled with the predominance of a phi
losophy which was truly cosmopolitan, — as was the
scholastic philosophy.

CHAPTER SIX

OPTIMISM AND IMPERSONALITY

i. Optimism in philosophy, in art, in religion, ii. Imper
sonality, iii. History of philosophy and literary attribution,
iv. Perenniality.

THE optimism of the mediaeval mind is another
feature which stands out as distinctive of the
whole civilization. The thirteenth century is a con
structive period in every domain. But such exer
cise of constructive powers and such realization in
practice involved confidence in human resources and
capacities. That confidence the age possessed
ahundantly. Not only had it a passion for ideals,
but it knew how to realize them in concrete form
and in practical life.

When dealing with scientific classifications and
philosophical systems, optimism means confidence
in the powers of reason, serenity in intellectual
work. Without such confidence, could they have
found the courage to set in order all the human sci
ences, and especially could they have spent their
energies in meticulously ordering the manifold
parts of a system so extensive as is the scholastic
philosophy?

136 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

They were in no doubt concerning the power of
the reason to grasp external realities, to know
everything to some extent.1 Subjectivism, which
confines the mind within the closed circle of its im
pressions, was foreign to the spirit of the times.
Tims, when Nicholas of Autrecourt, called some
times the Hume of the thirteenth century, taught
in Paris that the existence of the external world
cannot be demonstrated, that the principle of caus
ality is without objective validity, he was plainly
an exception; and so he was regarded as an ama
teur in paradoxes. The cultivated minds of the age
relied upon human reason unanimously. Frankly
dogmatic, the scholastic philosophy considers hu
man intelligence to have been created to know the
truth, just as fire was made to burn. To be sure,
the philosophers of the thirteenth century believe
that human intelligence lias its limits, — it knows
all things in a very imperfect manner — but within
these limits they give it full credence; it is for them
a spark lighted at the torch of eternal truth. This
conception of certitude neither includes nor ex
cludes our modern epistemology; like all that be
longs to the mediaeval genius it is sui generis.

Scholasticism is not less optimistic in its moral
teachings. It makes happiness to consist in the
fullest possible development of personality. It
teaches that nothing can efface from conscience the
fundamental principles of moral law. It maintains,

i See ch. VIII, i and ii.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 137

accordingly, that even the most wicked man still re
tains a fundamental tendency toward goodness, —
a tendency which renders his improvement always
possible.2

In the realm of art, optimism and serenity
are still more evident; for art springs from the
heart, which realizes joy even better than the spirit.
There appear in the Chansons de geste a joy of liv
ing and a freshness of imagery which enrich the
love between knights and ladies, an exhalation of
nature which reveals the profound happiness felt in
living in the midst of its bounties and wonders. We
all know what clear and vibrating poems the "Lit
tle Flowers" of St. Francis are, and how they ex
press as does the Divine Comedy of Dante, not only
a glorification of the Divine Creation and of the
Redemption, but also songs of delight in the pres
ence of the spectacle of nature.

Is it necessary to mention the Gothic cathedrals,
as they too sing a hymn of joy, the triumph of na
ture and of God? Their lofty arches flooded with
light, their windows sparkling in the sun like ori
ental tapestry, their noble and expressive vaults,
their profusion of paintings and of figures and of
symbols, — this is not the work of men who are skep
tical of life. The sculptors of the Middle Ages
"looked on the world with the wondering eyes of
children." They depict nature in its perfection of
beauty.

2 See below, p. 269.

138 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

Finally, a still more elevated motive stimulates
the optimistic view of life in society at large. It
is Christian idealism, — the hope of future happi
ness, the helief in the religious value of work ac
complished. Can we explain in any other way,
the wonderful exploits of optimism shown in the
Crusades? How closely they press upon each other
in that long succession! In spite of the hugeness
of the enterprise, or the lack of success in each of
those attempts, still the Crusades continued to
arouse an ever-recurring enthusiasm. They have
been well called "epopees of optimism."

Another feature which is closely connected with
the optimism of the scholastics and which requires
equal emphasis, is the impersonal character of their
work, a certain spirit of personal detachment which
pervades also their scholarly labors, — whether in
the classification of human knowledge, or the great
system of scholastic philosophy. Both their optim
ism and their impersonalism are simply the product
of a consciously progressive and collective effort.

Indeed the thirteenth century was possessed of a
significant conception regarding truth. Truth is
a great edifice to be gradually built up. This work
is necessarily co-operative and over a long period
of time; and therefore it must be entered into im
personally by each worker. The truth, and the
knowledge which expresses it, is not considered as

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 139

the personal property of him who finds it. On the
contrary, it is a great common patrimony which
passes from one generation to the next, ever in
creased by continuous and successive contributions.
"So shall it be to the end of the world," says Roger
Bacon, "because nothing is perfect in human
achievements." And he goes on to say: "Always
those who come later have added to the work of
their predecessors; and they have corrected and
changed a great deal, as we see especially in the case
of Aristotle, who took up and discussed all the ideas
of his predecessors. Moreover, many of the state
ments of Aristotle were corrected in turn by Avi-
cenna and by Averroes."3 Nor does Thomas Aqui
nas speak otherwise of the impersonal constitution
of philosophy and of its improvement. Referring
to Aristotle's Metaphysics, he writes: "That which
a single man can bring, through his work and his
genius, to the promotion of truth is little in com
parison with the total of knowledge. However,
from all these elements, selected and co-ordinated
and brought together, there arises a marvelous
thing, as is shown by the various departments of
learning, which by the work and sagacity of many
have come to a wonderful augmentation."4

3 Nam semper posteriores addiderunt ad opera priorum, et multa
correxerunt, et pltira mulaverunt, sicut patet per Aristotelem, max-
ime, qui omnes sententias praecedentium discussit. Et etiam Avic-
cenna et Averroes plura de dictis ejus correxerunt, Opus Majus,
Pars I, c. 6 (ed. Bridges, vol. Ill, p. 14).

* In lib. II Metaphys., Lectio 1.

140 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

Do not these declarations call to mind the beauti
ful thought of Pascal, who also reflected deeply and
shrewdly on the role of tradition in the continuity
of philosophy? "It is owing to tradition," he says,
"that the whole procession of men in the course of
so many centuries may be considered as a single
man, who always subsists, who learns continually."5
There is, then, no break in the continuity of philos
ophy, any more than there is in the other depart
ments of civilization; and a chain of gold joins the
Greeks to the Syrians, the Syrians to the Arabs,
and the Arabs to the Scholastics.

The impersonality of scholastic philosophy is
further revealed in the fact that those who build it
disclose nothing of their inner and emotional life.
Works like the autobiography of Abaelard are as
exceptional as the Confessions of Augustine. Only
the mystics speak of that which passes in the soul's
inmost life. In the voluminous works of Thomas
Aquinas, for instance, there is only a single passage
where the philosopher exhibits any emotions;6
everywhere else his thought runs without haste or
emotion, as tranquil and as majestic as a river.

Ill

The thirteenth century drew from these princi
ples, in the form of corollaries, its characteristic

s Pascal, OpuxciiJes, edit. Brunschvigg, p. 80.

B De unitatc intellectus contra Averroistas, (in fine), where his in
dignation is deeply stirred.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 141

views concerning the history of philosophy and lit
erary attribution. The determination of historical
fact and authorship is subordinated to the truth
which the scholastics are concerned to advance; the
determination of fact has no absolute value as such.
Consequently, they confine themselves to seeking,
from the authorities they refer to, a support for the
thesis they wish to defend.

From this attitude arises the tendency of the
mediaeval thinker to attenuate, and even to sup
press, all doctrinal divergencies,— such as those of
Plato, of Aristotle, of Augustine, of Isidore of
Seville, of the Venerable Bede, of Anselm of Can
terbury. Are not all these co-workers in a common
task? To understand this, one must study not the
common and stock phrases quoted by all, but rather
the difficult and more subtle texts, to which they
succeed in giving so many different meanings. The
thirteenth century has characteristic expressions to
describe this procedure, — for example, "in mcliua
inter Cretan" to interpret in a better way; "rcve-
r enter eocponere" to explain with respect; "plum
dare intellects/in" to give a dutiful meaning. These
are euphemisms of which the greatest make use,
when it is necessary to adapt some embarrassing
passage to their own theories on a given subject.
We recall here the astute words of John of Salis
bury concerning the philosophers of his day,
eager to bring Plato and Aristotle into agree
ment, — how they worked in vain to reconcile dead

142 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

people who contradicted each other all their lives!

Such being the fact, it seems difficult to admit
that the philosophers of the thirteenth century were
the slaves of tradition and the scrupulous servants
of authority. In judging of their critical attitude,
and of their attitude towards the ancients, one
should not tie fast to the mere letter of their state
ments; on the contrary, one should judge by their
interpretation of the texts which they are citing, for
or against their doctrines. If they sin against the
spirit of criticism, it is due to excess of liberty and
not to the lack of it. The most eminent philoso
phers took great liberties with their authorities.
"What else is authority but a muzzle?" wrote Adel-
ard of Bath to his nephew.7 "Authority has a nose
of wax, which may be turned in any direction," said
Alan of Lille.8 And Thomas declared, as is so
well known, that the argument from authority is
the weakest of all, — where the human reason is in
volved.9

On the other hand, their attitude has a significant
practical implication. If philosophical work is di
rected to the collective and progressive construction
of a fund of truth, as its aim, then of course only
the work matters, and the name of the worker

7 "Quid enim alind auctoritas dicenda qmirn capistrmn?" Adelardi
Batcnsis de quihusdam naturalibus quaestionihus, op. cit., fol. 76 V.

s Contra Ilaereticos, I, 30. "Auctoritas cereum habet nasum . . .
i.e., in diversum potest flecti sensum."

9 Summa Theol, 1", q. VIII, ad secundum. Locus ab auctoritate
quae fundatur super ratione humana est infinnissimus.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 143

necessarily disappears in face of the grandeur of
truth. Hence their philosophy attaches little im
portance to the name of its collaborators. "Unus
dicit" "aliquis dicit" they say in speaking of con
temporaries. It is, as it were, the law of humility
and silence. It was necessary for a writer to be
known by everyone to have his name mentioned at
all (allegari) . One can count on one's fingers those
who received such an honour in the thirteenth cen
tury.

On such principles the textual interpolations
made by the copyists were not regarded as any vio
lation of the original; rather they were intended
and taken to improve the expression of truth which
the author sought to convey.10 Similarly, literary
theft was not stealing; it was the utilization of a
common treasure. In the twelfth century a monk
by the name of Alcher of Clairvaux had written a
small book on psychology, and in order to ensure
it a wide circulation the copyists of the time as
cribed it to Augustine. William of Auvergne,
Bishop of Paris in 1229, reproduced almost word
for word in his De Immortalitate Animae the simi
lar work of Dominicus Gundissalinus, the arch
deacon of Toledo. There are numerous examples
of the same kind. If we recall, further, that the
negligence of copyists or the modesty of authors

10 For a striking example of such interpolation, in the 8umma
contra Gentiles of Thomas, see A. Pelzer, Rev. Nf'o-Srol., May, 1920,
p. 231.

144 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

set in circulation a mass of manuscripts without any
well-determined status, \ve can readily understand
some of the insurmountable difficulties which the
recorder of mediaeval ideas faces; for instance, in
identifying opponents or in attributing texts or in
detecting literary theft.

With this understanding of the matter, we are
little surprised to learn that the predominant scien
tific classification represented such an amalgama
tion that the names of all those who were connected
with its origin or perfection or promulgation were
either neglected or forgotten. As with popular
music, so here; each composer appropriates and
fashions in his own way.

This same understanding also enables us to see
just why and in what measure the scholastic phi
losophy itself is the soul of a collective body, made
up of men belonging to different peoples. To be
sure, there were some among them who opposed
their mighty personalities to this fund of ideas
which was the common heritage of all, — for ex
ample, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Henry
of Ghent, and others. But apart from these, as
the documents show, the great host of men of aver
age ability taught and developed the same doctrine,
without either opposing it or adding anything of
their own. They were ennobled by it; their little
ness was redeemed by its grandeur. Like dwarfs
on the shoulders of giants, they enjoyed a promi
nence which thev did not deserve.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 145

One last corollary — and not the least important
—is born of this impersonal character of learning
and its progressive constitution. Philosophy is not
something essentially mobile, some dazzling chi
mera, which disappears or changes with the succeed
ing epochs, but it possesses a sort of perenniality.
It forms a monument, to which are always added
new stones. The truth of the time of the Greeks is
still the truth of the time of Thomas Aquinas and
of Duns Scotus. Truth is something enduring. Of
course, there is left a place for progress and ex
tension in human knowledge, there are adaptations
of certain doctrines to social conditions; this ap
pears, for example, in the scholastic doctrine of the
mutability of ethical laws. But the principles which
rule the logical, ethical and social activities remain
unchanged; they are like human nature of which
they are expressions, and which does not change,11
or like the order of essences which is ultimately
based on divine immutability. Nothing is more
contrary to the spirit of scholastic philosophy than
the modern temper of displacing preceding contri
butions with one's own, doing away with tradition,
and beginning de novo the upbuilding of thought.
From this standpoint we may say that the philoso
phers of the thirteenth century are conscious of the
responsibility of building for eternity.

11 See below ch. XII, i.

146 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

Nor is it different in the other branches of knowl
edge, — in civil and canon law, and in the social and
political realm. Thus Dante, who on so many
questions reveals the spirit of his time, begins his
De Monar cliia with a significant statement in this
connection. I give the opening sentences of that
unique treatise. "All men," he says, "whose su
perior nature inculcates the love of truth, have, as
their chief care, it seems, to work for posterity.
Just as they themselves were enriched by the work
of the ancients, so must they leave to posterity a
profitable good. Now, of what use would that man
be who demonstrated some theorem of Euclid
anew; or he who tried to show again, after Aristotle
had done so, wherein happiness lies; or again, he
who attempted after Cicero the defense of the
aged? . . . This wearying superfluity of work
would be of no avail." And then he continues:
"Now as the knowledge of the temporal monarchy
is to be considered as the most useful of the truths
which still remain hidden, and as it is extremely ob
scure, my object is to bring it out into the open
with the twofold end of giving humanity a useful
witness of my solicitude and of gaining for myself
(keeping in view my own glory) the reward which
such a work deserves." Like all the rest, though
with a modest store of ambition besides, Dante
dreams of writing for eternity.

This impersonal and eternal note is also found in
the hymns of the Catholic liturgy, that collection of

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 147

spiritual outpourings, wherein so often the author
remains unknown.

And must not the same be said of the works of
art? One does not know the names of the artists
who illuminated the manuscripts of the thirteenth
century, nor of the glass-makers. Since many of
these works were made in the cloisters, doubtless
the monks who did the work were moved by their
rule of humility to hide their names.12

Similarly, the epic poems contain numerous
themes which are like a treasure of folk-lore upon
which all may draw alike.

Above all, this impersonal character is found in
the Gothic system, which in every respect resembles
the scholastic philosophy and helps us to under
stand it. For, the Gothic system is the property
of everyone; while each architect may interpret it
in his own way, it belongs in reality to no one.
Even now, we do not know the names of all those
who conceived the plans and directed the work on
the great cathedrals; or, if they were once known,
they have since fallen into oblivion. Who now
speaks of Petrus Petri, the director at the building
of the cathedral of Toledo? Armies of sculptors
chiselled the virgins and saints which occupy the
portals and niches, yet how few of these have sealed
their works with their names! The builders of
cathedrals also were builders for eternity; and in

12 Rule of St. Benedict, cap. 57. Artifices si sint in monasterio,
cum omni humiHtate facient istas artes.

148 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

their minds, the materials of their structures were
to survive for centuries; they were to last not for
one generation but for all generations to come.

CHAPTER SEVEN

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY AND THE
RELIGIOUS SPIRIT

i. Common definition of scholastic philosophy as a religious
philosophy, ii. Reflective analysis of the distinction between
philosophy and theology. iii. The religious spirit of the
epoch, iv. Connections of philosophy with religion not af
fecting the integrity of the former, v. Subordination of phi
losophy to Catholic theology in the light of this analysis, vi.
Solution and adjustment of the problem, vii. Influences of
philosophy in other fields. Conclusion.

REGARDING western scholastic philosophy in the
Middle Ages, every one repeats the laconic judge
ment, that it is "philosophy in the service, and un
der the sway and direction, of Catholic theology."
It could he nothing else, they say, and it seems that
one has said everything after pronouncing this
clear-cut formula. -This current definition, suscep
tible of the most varied meanings, is found in near
ly all the books which deal with scholastic philos
ophy. Whether their authors give an extreme or
a moderate interpretation of it, it is offered to the
reader as an abridged thesis, containing in con
densed form all that is worth knowing of the sub-

150 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

ject. "Scholasticism is philosophy placed in the
service of doctrine already established by the
Church, or at least philosophy placed in such a
subordination to this doctrine that it becomes the
absolute norm for what they have in common."1

Now this current definition of scholastic philoso
phy in the Middle Ages defines it very badly, be
cause it contains a mixture of truth and of false
hood, of accuracy and of inaccuracy. It must be
distrusted, like those equivocal maxims which John
Stuart Mill calls "sophisms of simple inspection,"
which by force of repetition enjoy a kind of tran-
seat, or vogue, in science without being questioned.

To eliminate the ambiguity we must attend to
the historical setting, and view both philosophy
and theology in the midst of the civilization whence
they evolved. For this we must consider what re
sults they attained; and the study of this will dis
close a new relational aspect, wherein the scholastic
philosophy and its classification of knowledge
appear in vital and organic harmony with the gen
eral mentality of the epoch.

i "Die Scholastik ist die Philosophic im Dienste der bereits beste-
hcnde Kirchenlehre odcr wenigstens in einer solchcn Untcrordnung
unter dieselbe dass diese auf gemeinsamen Gebeite als die absolute
Norm gilt," p. 196. Dr. Mathias Baumgartner, in the last (10th)
edition of the Ueberweg-Heinze Gntndriss der Geschichte der Philos
ophic, 7/weiter Teil, "Die mittlere oder die patristische und scholas-
tische Zeit," Berlin, 1915.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 151

That philosophy was a science distinct from the
ology, had been universally recognized since the
middle of the twelfth century;2 and the masters of
the thirteenth century laid emphasis upon this dis
tinction. The sharp separation of the personnel in
philosophy (artistae] and in theology is one of the
first indications that the distinction of the two dis
ciplines was clearly maintained. The University
of Paris simply took over the methodological classi
fications of the twelfth century, as one finds them
in the treatises of Dominicus Gundissalinus, Hugo
of St. Victor, Robert Grosseteste, and many others.
The tree of knowledge has the form of a pyramid,
with the particular sciences at the base, philosophy
midway up, and theology at the top, as we have al
ready explained.3 What is new at this stage of
the development is the reflective and reasoned study
of the mutual independence of philosophy and the
ology.

This independence rests on the difference in the
points of view (ratio formalis objecti) from which
philosophy and theology regard the materials with
which they are occupied (materia).4 Bearing in
mind this principle of methodology, we can under
stand the declaration with which Thomas Aquinas

2 See above, ch. Ill, p. 50.

s See above, ch. IV, pp. 85 ff.

4 Cf., ch. IV, p. 87.

PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

opens his two Suinmac on the raison d'etre of the
ology outside the philosophical sciences (praeter
philosophical disciplinas) and its distinction from
philosophy. "It is," he says, "diversity in the point
of view of knowledge (ratio cognoscibilis) which
determines the diversity of the sciences. The as
tronomer and the physicist establish the same con
clusion, that the earth is round; but the astronomer
uses mathematical arguments abstracted from mat
ter, while the physicist uses arguments drawn from
the material condition of bodies. Nothing, then,
prevents the questions of the philosophical sciences,
so far as they are known by the light of natural
reason, from being studied at the same time by an
other science, in the measure that they are known
by revelation. Thus theology, which is occupied
with sacred doctrine, differs in kind from theodicy,
which is part of philosophy."15

A contemporary of St. Thomas, Henry of
Ghent, also maintains this doctrine, accepted by
all the intellectuals of the time: "Theology is a
distinct science," he says. "Though theology is oc
cupied with certain questions touched on by phi
losophy, theology and philosophy are none the less
distinct sciences, for they differ in the aim pursued
(sunt ad aVnid), the processes (per aliud), and the
methods (secundum aliud}. The philosopher con
sults only reason; the theologian begins by an act

s Summa Theol, 1% q. I, art. 1.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 153

of faith, and his science is directed by a supernat
ural light."6

It is easy to show that such principles were wide
ly applied in the thirteenth century. Philosophers
reasoned on the origin of ideas, on human liberty,
on causality and finality in nature, on the relations
between will and knowledge, and on many other
problems of a purely rational kind. One would
seek in vain a religious veneer or a theological ar-
rierc pen-sec in the solutions given; their constant
reliance upon Aristotle is the simple fact that
makes this impossible. On the other hand, the
ologians discuss the Trinity, the Redemption, the
supernatural end of man, and like problems, and
they invoke Scriptural authority. When certain
matters are common to the two orders of study,
such as the existence and the nature of God, there
is a difference in the point of view, from which the
philosopher and the theologian respectively discuss
them. Their arguments meet, like the rays of light
which set out from distinct foci and are received on
the same screen; but they are no more confused
than — in our comparison — the luminous sources are
confused. Hence numerous philosophic systems
could arise, remarkable explanations of the world

vRumma Theol, art. VII, q. 1, Nos. 10-13. "Atihuc philos-
ophus considerat quuecumquc considerat, lit perrepta et intellecta
solo lumine naturalis rationis; theologus vero considerat singula ut
primo credita lumine fidei, et secundo intellecta lumine altiori super
lumen naturalis rationis infuso."

154 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

and of life, capable of being judged and set forth
as one sets forth and judges the philosophy of Aris
totle, or of Plato, or of Descartes, or of Kant.

It is important to observe that this distinction
was universally recognized by the scholastics of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. That the pub
lic itself was of like mind in the matter is evidenced
by the painting by Traini, preserved in the Church
of St. Catherine of Pisa, to which we have already
referred.7 In this picture, entitled the Triumph of
St. Thomas, the great artist of the fourteenth cen
tury has symbolized in drawing and in color all the
intellectual movements of the time. What inter
ests us especially here is the diversity of the sources
by which Thomas is inspired, as he sits upon a gold
en throne in the centre of the composition, the
Sinnma Theologica open on his knees. From the
top of the picture Christ sheds upon him rays of
light, which are reflected by six sacred personages
—Moses, the four Evangelists, and St. Paul — who
are placed in a semicircle; then, further, by Plato
and Aristotle arranged on the two sides after the
same plan. Luminous waves spread the doctrines
over the world, whilst Averroes, in the attitude of
one conquered, lies at Thomas's feet. We have
here a synthetic picture, as it were, which presents
a striking resume of intellectual speculation in the
thirteenth century; and it reveals the impression
received by men like Traini, who was placed in a

7 Cf. above, p. 84.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 155

position that enabled him to see in broad outline.
It teaches us that theology and philosophy are in
different planes, with a subordination like that of
the personages who symbolize the one and the
other; it shows us that both are joined, as com
plementary, in the work of Thomas, that famous
thinker whom the contemporaries of Traini called
"doctor sanctus." Moreover, the writers of the
Renaissance and the Reformation, — for the most
part so curt in their treatment of the Middle Ages
—have clearly distinguished the scholastic theolo
gians and the scholastic philosophers, reserving
rather for the latter the name of scholastics : "Cum
vero duplicem eorum differentiam animadvertamus
theologos olios, olios philosophos,, quamquam illis
hoc nomen potiiis tributum sit" This judgement,
which I take from the treatise De doctoribus schol-
asticis of Busse, 1676, is confirmed by Binder,
Tribbechovius,8 and by all those who belong to that
curious category of detractors of scholasticism, on
whom Rabelais and so many others have rested their
sarcasm. These "distributers of injuries" are better
advised than some of our contemporary historians,
for whom the speculation of the Middle Ages is a
chaos, a hodge-podge of philosophy and theology,
and who make the history of mediaeval philosophy
a department of the history of religion.

Not to understand the fundamental distinction

8 Tribbechovius, De doctoribus scholastic-is et corrupta per eos
divinarum humanarumque rerum scientia. Giessen. 1665.

156 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

between the order of nature and that of grace, be-
twreen the rational conception of the world and the
systeinatization of revealed dogmas, would be to
misunderstand the speculative work of the Middle
Ages, and to substitute arbitrary conceptions for
the indisputable declarations of its greatest doctors.

Ill

The freedom of philosophy from dependence on
theology rests then on solid methodological
grounds. But while philosophy and theology are
objects of speculation, we must not forget that
both are vital parts of the civilization in which they
appear and whose effects they feel. Hence they
are both touched. — the one more than the other of
course — by the religious spirit.

Could it be otherwise in an epoch in which
Catholicism leaves its mark on all civilization? To
judge of this impression it is not enough to turn
to the Golden Legend, or the Apocryphal Gospels,
which furnished food for the piety of the people.
It is not enough to collect popular superstitions,—
such as the charges and stories of Caesar of Ileis-
terbach. It is not enough to note the excesses
caused by the veneration of relics, the conflicts be
tween abbots and bishops or the bourgeois of the
towns and the feudalists, whom material interests
divided. These many oddities pale before the great
fact that the Catholic religion inspires society
throughout and regulates its morals, its art, and its
thought. The most individualistic statesmen--

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 157

Philip Augustus or St. Louis in France, Simon of
Montfort or Edward I in England, Frederick II
or Rudolph of Hapsburg in Germany, Ferdinand
of Castile — all recognized the Catholic Church as
the necessary foundation of the social structure,
even when their politics led them into conflict with
the Papacy in order to shake off its patronage.
The same ardent faith which had aroused the Cru
sades also gave birth to the new monastic orders of
Dominicans and Franciscans, who came from the
most diverse social strata, and so raised the level of
belief and morality in the masses. Even the hereti
cal movement that appeared in Languedoc and
Champagne and Flanders shows the vitality of the
religious sentiment. In spite of the spirit of oppo
sition to the Church, the century of Philip Augus
tus remains an epoch of Catholic faith.9 By its
dogmas and its morality, Christianity penetrates
the lives of individuals and families and peoples.
Under the influence of Christian ideals and canoni
cal law, usury and the taking of interest are for
bidden; just prices and just wages rule trade and
commerce. In the corporation, work is a holy
thing, masters are equal, art is allied to handicraft,
the institution of the masterpiece guarantees the
quality of the product. It was because one worked
for God that the thirteenth century could cover,
first the soil of France and then that of Germany,
with gigantic cathedrals, chiselled like jewels.

9 Luchaire, op. cit., p. 318.

158 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

Likewise, the intimate union between religion and
beauty shines forth in the work of the period. The
"Rationale divinorum officioruni' of William (Du-
rarid) Bishop of Mende, shows in detail how the
cathedrals are at onee marvels of art and symbols
of prayer. The church of Amiens, which was the
most perfect of the great French monuments, is a
striking demonstration of the aesthetic resources of
the original scheme. That of Chartres no less bril
liantly exhibits its iconographic resources. Each
stone had its language. Covered with sculpture, it
presents a complete religious programme. It is
for the people the great book of sacred history, the
catechism in images. Think of Amiens or Char
tres, Paris or Laon. In every line appears the
function of a temple destined for the masses; from
every angle the gaze is drawn towards the altar,
which sums up the idea of sacrifice. The frescoes
and the glass windows of Giotto breathe forth the
perfume of religious life; the poems of St. Francis,
singing nature, raise the soul towards God; and
Dante wrote to Can Grande della Scala, tyrant of
Verona, that he wished by means of his poems to
snatch away the living from their state of wretched
ness and put them in the way of eternal happiness.10
Art, in all of its forms, shows the unfailing bonds
between religion and beauty.

10 Dicendum est breviter quod finis totius ct partis est removere
viventcs in hac vita dc statu miseriae et perducere ad statum
felicitatis. See Dantis Alighieri Epistola X, in opere Latine di
Dante, ed. G. Giuliani, Firenze, 1882, Vol. II, p. 46.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 159

The religious spirit that penetrated everything
was bound to be felt also in the domain of science,
and notably philosophy. We shall see this ques
tion — so complicated and so badly understood—
under new aspects, in seeking to understand the
precise relations of scholastic philosophy and the
Catholic religion. In what does the bond between
philosophy and the religious medium consist ? How
can one reconcile it with that doctrinal indepen
dence which philosophers so fiercely claim?

It is easy to make the reconciliation for a certain
group of ties, which I shall call external, and which
therefore cannot really affect philosophical doctrine.
They are not less suggestive of the mentality of
the time, and the}7 show the perfect harmony ex
isting between scholastic philosophy and mediaeval
civilization. One can, it seems to me, reduce these
extra-doctrinal relations to three classes, which we
must examine briefly.

The first class results from the social superiority
of the theologians; and this indicates that philos
ophy is for the most part a preparation for theo
logical studies. That theology holds the place of
honor in the complete cycle of studies, and that it
is the topmost in the pyramid of knowledge ought
not to surprise us; for all study whatever was sub
servient to the clerical estate. The thirteenth cen
tury in tin's only continued the traditions of the
earlier Middle Ages. The University of Paris, is-

160 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

suing from the schools at Xotre Dame, counted
only clerics among its professors, and these profes
sors had the closest relations with the Chancellor
of Notre Dame and with the Papacy. Many were
themselves canons, either of Paris or of the prov
inces or from abroad. Not to mention the Fran
ciscans or Dominicans, who were the most brilliant
masters in the University, the translation of Greek
and Arabic works — so momentous for the West-
was due to clerks of Toledo or monks of Cxreece
and Sicily. In short, all the co-workers in the great
awakening of the thirteenth century are ecclesi
astics.

It is natural that the masters in the Faculty of
Theology (sacrac paginae) took precedence of all
other masters, and notably of philosophers. In
this, University discipline was only the reflection
of social life. The intensity of Catholic life make,->
intelligible wrhy so many of these "artists," or phi
losophers, desired to undertake the study of theol
ogy, after taking their degrees in the lower faculty.
So much was this the case that the mastership of
arts was a direct preparation for the grades of the
Theological Faculty. The documents make this
clear: "Non cst conscncsccndiim in ariibu s scd a
liminibus suiit salutandae"1 —One does not grow
old in philosophy; one must take leave of it finally
and engage himself with theology. It is the inten-

io"'sry. Denifle, Die Unlrrrsitiilen dot Mitlclalters bis 1400, Bd.
I, pp. 99-100.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 161

sity of this Catholic life which makes us understand
how Robert of Sorbonne, founder of the famous
college of that name, could compare the Last Judg
ment, — in his short treatise De Conscientia11 — to
the examination for the degree at Paris, and pursue
the comparison into a thousand details. In that
"supreme trial" for the Doctorate, for example,
the judge will not he accessible to recommendations
or presents, and all will pass or fail strictly in at-
cordance with the requirements of justice. It is,
moreover, the intensity of religious life at that
epoch which alone can explain certain controversies
among theologians which contravene our modern
ideas, — such as that on the subject of Christian
perfection. While ordinary people are enthusiastic
for a religion that is simple and sturdy, the learned
at Paris sought to determine whether the life of the
regulars is nearer to perfection than that of the
seculars. Between 1255 and 1275 all doctors in
theology were obliged to declare themselves on this
question. Certain secular masters treated it with
an asperity and a passion which served as an outlet
for their ill-humour against the Dominicans and
Franciscans, whom they never forgave for having
taken the three chairs in the Faculty of Theology.12
If, for all these reasons both social and religious,
more credit or honour or importance was attached to
theology and to religious discussion than to phi-

11 Edited by F. Chambon, Robert de Sorbon, Paris, 1903.

12 Cf. above, p. 76.

1G2 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

losophy, this fact could in no wise change the posi
tion of philosophy, which remained what it is and
must be— a synthetic study of the world by means
of the reason alone.

The second class of ties results from the penetra
tion of philosophy into speculative theology, and
from its being constituted an apology for Chris
tianity,— the penetration affecting theology alone,
and philosophy not at all. This method which was
so dear to the masters of Paris, has been commonly
called by modern authors the dialectic method in
theology. We already know that speculative the
ology, which achieved its greatest renown in the
thirteenth century, aimed at the co-ordination of
Catholic dogma; therefore its chief method was
necessarily based upon the authority of the sacred
books. But by the side of this principal method,
the theologians employed another one, as accessory
arid secondary. In order to make dogmas intelligi
ble, they sought to show their well-founded reason
ableness, — just as Jewish theologians had done in
the days of Philo, or Arabian theologians had done
with the Koran. In the twelfth century, Abaelard,
and Hugo of St. Victor, and Gilbert de la Porree,
had founded this apologetic method; and in the
thirteenth century it had attained the widest ex
tension. The same Thomas Aquinas who taught
the clear distinction between philosophy and the
ology, wrote on the subject: "If theology borrows
from philosophy, it is not because it needs its help,

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 163

but in order to make more obvious the truths which
it teaches."13

The application of philosophy to theology I call
apologetics. Just as the application of mathe
matics to astronomy affects astronomy alone, so
also the application of philosophy to theology af
fects only theology. On this historical point, which
I have long sought to establish, the writers of the
thirteenth century give ample support ; for they dis
tinguish the two theological methods of authority
and of reason, cfauctoritates et rationes"*

It clearly follows that the use of philosophy for
theological ends arises by the side of pure philos
ophy, while the latter remains unchanged. If you
will recall the religious mentality of the thirteenth
century, you will readily understand how the ap
plication of philosophy to dogma led many minds
into theology. The result was that most philoso
phers became theologians; and mediaeval apolo
getics arose in the most varied forms. In a society
where heresy itself sprang from an excess of re
ligious zeal and under colour of purifying belief, no
one dreamed of opposing dogma; on the contrary,
it was explained — and in all sorts of ways. The

is "Ad secundum dicendum quod haec scientia accipere potest
aliquid a philosophicis disciplinis, non quod ex necessitate eis indi-
geat, sed ad majorem manifestationem eorum quae in hac scientia
tiaduntur." Summa Theol., 1», q. I, art. 5.

i* This distinction between "auctoritates et rationes," appears as
early as Peter of Poitiers. Cf. Grabmann, Gesch. d. scliol. Methode,
I, 33.

164 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

wisest, following the traditions of Anselm and of
the Victorines, posited a domain of mystery re
served to the advantage of theology. Thomas
Aquinas does not admit the philosophical demon
stration of mystery itself; he allows philosophy to
prove only that mystery contains nothing irra
tional. Duns Scotus goes further; from fear of
actual conflict, he withdraws every theological
question from the empire of reason. But others
did not follow these wise examples. Raymond
Lully wished to support all the contents of revela
tion hy the syllogism — as formerly Abaelard had
done; and Roger Bacon even confused philosophy
with apologetics. Mediaeval rationalism, in its
scholastic form, vindicates for reason the power of
demonstrating dogma in every way; and in this it
is in striking contrast with the modern rationalism
which would deny dogma in the name of reason.

Where could the profoundly religious spirit of
mediaeval speculation appear more luminously than
in these rash attempts? It was religious to the
point of folly. There is no better word to charac
terize the attitude of the Latin Averroists, who
stirred so deeply the University of Paris in the thir
teenth and fourteenth centuries. Not wishing to
deny either the Catholic faith or the compact mass
of philosophical doctrines which were in flagrant
contradiction with this faith, they hit upon an inge
nious device; this was the astonishing doctrine of
the twofold truth: "What is true in philosophy,"

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 165

they said, "may be false in theology, and vice

Whatever these different attitudes may have
been, — and the religious concern which inspired
them — they had a very important effect on the rela
tion of philosophy and theology. For, the theolo
gian was wont to enter into a great number of phi
losophical questions for the purpose of his apolo
getics. Since no science bears more than does phi
losophy the impress of him who treats it, each the
ologian thus retained and developed his own philo
sophic attitude. Moreover he might feel again the
attraction of certain philosophic problems, or h<j
might refresh the memory of his hearers— "prop-
ter imperitos" says Henry of Ghent ; in both cases
he made deep and prolonged incursions into the
ground reserved for philosophy. The result was
that philosophy became employed in both the Fac
ulty of Arts and the Faculty of Theology, — defi
nitely disinterested in the former and frankly apol
ogetic in the latter.

This is the simple explanation of that pedagogi
cal phenomenon, peculiar to the Middle Ages,
which has perplexed historians so much — the mix
ture of matters philosophical and theological in the
Summae, the Quodlibcta, the Quaestiones Dispu-
tatae, and in almost all mediaeval works. To con
sider only the title of Summa Thcologica given to
their chief works by Alexander of Hales, Thomas

is Cf. ch. XIII, iv.

16G PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

Aquinas, Henry of Ghent and others, one woul.l
think they are great works in which philosophy has
no place. But let there he no deception. Genuine
philosophical treatises are contained in these vast
productions. It will suffice to refer to a part of
the great Summa of Thomas Aquinas, wherein are
to be found integral treatises on psychology and
ethics and law.10

The religious mentality of the time created also
a third class of ties, existing not het\veen philos
ophy and theology hut between the subjective in
tentions of philosophers and the objective end to
which they subordinated all their studies, — which
was no other than that of obtaining happiness. The
eye of all was fixed on the future life. On the mar
gin of the Summa Contra Gentiles, in the rough
draft by Thomas himself, we find various pious in
vocations (arc, are Maria).17 As Dante wrote the
Divine Comedy "to snatch the living from the state
of wretchedness and to lead them to the state of
happiness," so also the intellectuals of the thir
teenth century refer their researches, whatever they
are — astronomy, mathematics, the science of obser
vation, arid philosophy also — to their personal striv
ing for Christian happiness. There was here no
difference between them and the painters or sculp
tors or architects, who also worked for the glory of

iff See Summa Theol, 1% qq. LXXV-XC; lagae, qq. I-XXV; ibid.,
qq. XC-XCVII.

i? Summa contra Gentiles, ad codices manuscriptos pracscrtira
sancti Doctoris exacta, Romae, 1918, Praefatio, p. VIII.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 167

God and their own salvation, or even princes and
kings, who were all moved by the desire to avoid
hell and to merit heaven, and who did not conceal
this in their official acts. But the intention was a
matter of moral consciousness; it changed in no re
spect either the politics of kings or the beauty of
works of art or the value of philosophical systems.
Scholastics would have applied to their case the
famous distinction of "finis opens" (the work it
self) and "finis operantis" (the intention with
which it was done).

To sum up: Neither the social superiority of
theologians nor the constitution of theological apol
ogetics nor the religious tendency of thinkers was
an obstacle to the independence of philosophy.
However, these three facts make perfectly plain
just how philosophy also in the thirteenth century
was bathed in a general atmosphere of religion
which pervaded everything else.

But, since we have raised in general terms the
question of the relations between philosophy and
religion in the thirteenth century, there is a last
class of ties of which it remains to speak, and which
touch very closely philosophic doctrine itself —
the prohibitive or negative subordination of phi
losophy to theology. Profoundly convinced that
Catholic dogma is the expression of the infallible
word of God; convinced, on the other hand, that the
truth cannot overthrow the truth, without over-

168 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

throwing the principle of contradiction and involv
ing all certainty in this ruin, the scholastics drew
this conclusion: that philosophical doctrine cannot
in reality contradict theological doctrine, — there
fore it is prohibited from doing so.

To understand the precise meaning of this pro
hibition we must note three points: First, that it is
based on the principle of the solidarity of truth,
second, that it involves the denial of contradiction,
and not the assertion of positive proof; and, third,
that it affects philosophy in part only, namely, so
far as its domain belongs at the same time (but
from another point of view) to theology. Let us
consider each of these in turn.

Truth cannot contradict truth. Music, \vrites
Thomas Aquinas, depends on the application of
mathematical principles, which it cannot, therefore,
contravene; but it is not concerned with their foun
dation, — that is not its affair. Assuming the fact
of a revelation — and in the heart of the Middle
Ages no one doubted it — the attitude of the schol
astics is logical. Henry of Ghent puts the matter
concisely, when he says: "If wTe admit (supposito}
that theological doctrines are true, we cannot ad
mit that other doctrines can contradict them."18

18 "Supposito quod huic scicntiae non subjacet nisi verum . . .
supposito quod quaccumque vera sunt judicio et auctoritate hujus
scientiae . . . his inquam suppositis, cum ex eis manifestum sit quod
tarn auctoritas hujus scientiae quam ratio . . . veritati innititur et
verum vero contrariurn essc non potest, absolute dicendum quod
auctoritati hujus scripturae ratio nullo niodo potest esse contraria."
Summa. Theol., X, 3, No. 4.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 169

That the prohibition is solely negative in char
acter, appears from a statute of the Faculty of
Arts of 1272. This statute simply enjoins the
"artists" (artistae) from <( deter minare contra
fidem" '; but it does not instruct them "determinant
pro fide/'1 No one followed this simple precept
with greater breadth of mind than did Thomas
Aquinas; and his famous position regarding the
eternity of the world is ample evidence of this fact.
Thus, the Bible teaches that God created the world
in time. To avoid contradicting this dogma,
Thomas eliminates the thesis that the world is
eternal. But he does maintain that the idea of
eternal creation is not contradictory, — because the
eternity of the world would not be in opposition to
its contingency.20

Finally, as regards its limited effect on philos
ophy, this prohibition applies only to matters ex
pounded by both philosophy and theology. The in
terdiction has no force unless both domains are in
volved; therefore philosophy was affected only to
a very limited extent.

With this understanding of the scholastic con
ception before us, we might seek to estimate the
truth of their view concerning the relation of phi-

19 Chartularlum Univers. Parisiensis, ed. Denifle et Chatelain, I, 499.

20 Mundum non semper fuisse sola fide tenetur et demonstrative
probari non potest. . . . Demonstrari non potest quod homo aut
caelum aut lapis non semper fuit . . . unde non est impossible quod
homo generetur ab homine in infinitum. Summa Theol., 1% q.
XLVI, art. 2.

170 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

losophy to theology. The result would of course
vary, according to the acceptance or rejection of
Christianity and the particular meaning given to
the idea of revelation. But we are here concerned
with an historical problem. Certainly, from that
point of view, there can be no doubt concerning the
position in fact taken by the scholastics of the thir
teenth century.

We are now in position to evaluate the commonly
accepted view of scholastic philosophy, which was
given at the outset of this lecture. The definition
which was then quoted,- — accepted by most his
torians of mediaeval philosophy — conceives of
scholastic philosophy as essentially religious.

Of course, one can say of scholastic philosophy
that it is largely inspired by religion. However,
this is true in so general a sense that the fact turns
out to be irrelevant for purposes of definition.
Their philosophy evolved in a social atmosphere in
which religion was dominant. Under the spell of
this mentality theological studies enjoyed a pres
tige superior to that which was granted to philo
sophical studies. The proximity of the faculties of
theology and philosophy introduced a kind of pas
sion for combining (but not confusing) philosophi
cal and theological questions in the same work.
Finally, as regards the realm of morals, philosophy
was regarded by the intellectuals of the Middle

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 171

Ages as a preliminary step in aspiring to happi
ness. But this religions inspiration affects all the
other activities that make up the civilization of the
thirteenth century — politics, art, morals, family,
work. The religions inspiration is a relational
characteristic along with many others ; but precisely
because this characteristic belongs to the civiliza
tion, it belongs to all its factors and is not peculiar
to philosophy, which is only one factor. Hence it
is as inadequate to the definition of their philosophy
as would be, for example, the description of the oak
by reference merely to the nature of the soil, which
its roots share with those of the elm and the beech
and the other trees of the forest. One can under
stand why historians who study expressly the civi
lization of the Middle Ages,21 should single out for
criticism the dominant preoccupation with salva
tion, in the thirteenth century scholasticism, and
should regard this as sufficiently characteristic.
But it seems incredible that works which treat
solely of the historical exposition of philosophical
doctrines should be content with such a superficial
judgment; and the procedure seems to me inadmis
sible.

In addition to the general criticism which we
have just made of this definition, on the ground of
insufficiency, some special criticisms may be con
sidered on the basis of our preceding study.

21 As does, for example, H. O. Taylor in his remarkable work,
The Mediaeval Mind, vol. II, ch. XXXV.

172 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

Scholasticism, others say, is philosophy placed in
the service of doctrine already established by the
Church. Not at all. To place philosophy in the
service of theology is to use apologetic; and apolo
getic, which proposes to show the rational character
of dogmas fixed beforehand, comes from scholastic
theology and not from scholastic philosophy. To
define, according to the explicit procedure of Aris
totle, is to say what a thing is, and not only what
it is not.

Is scholasticism, then, placed in such dependence
on theology as to follow it without any contradic
tion whatever? The reply to this question is in the
affirmative, provided the ground is a common one.
But the question is whether this dependence is
enough to constitute a complete definition, and one
must reply in the negative. In the first place, be
cause this dependence simply places boundaries or
limits beyond which one cannot pass. It does not
treat of what is beyond, or of numerous philosophi
cal doctrines in which theology is not interested;
but in which our definition should be interested.
Scholastic philosophy includes vast domains which
are not in conflict with the realm of theology,"

22 Even Mr. Taylor (op. cit.) recognizes that scholastic philoso
phers are devoted to the pursuit of knowledge for itself. Beside the
joy of working for their salvation, they have the joy of study. Men
like Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, and Thomas Aquinas, could
not have done what they did, says he, without the love of knowledge
in their souls. Similarly, it has been shown by Male, that in addi
tion to the symbolic sculpture, which is based on religious doctrine,

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 173

Now definition involves not merely the outlining of
limits, but also the penetrating of the field itself.
We object further, because this dependence does
not establish any doctrinal content, but simply for
bids contradiction. It can therefore only establish
a negative — that is to say, an imperfect — definition
of philosophical doctrine, which is the thing itself
to be defined.

VII

We conclude then that need of universal order,
cosmopolitan value, optimism, impersonality, and
religious spirit are so many harmonious relations
which exist between scholastic philosophy and all
the other spheres of the civilization in which it ap
pears.

Hut in addition to these harmonious relations,
which reveals this civilization rather in its static
aspect, there are also relations which are distinctly
dynamic. For, scholasticism had a very profound
influence within the various departments of psy
chical life; and from this angle of its efficacy it
acquires a new value for our consideration.

What has been said concerning mediaeval apolo
getics constitutes an example of the penetration of
philosophic doctrine within the domain of theology.
In the same way one can show that this doctrine re
acted in the spheres of canon law and of civil law

there arc many sculptural designs and motives in the Gothic cathe
drals which are introduced solely for the sake of artistic beauty.
See E. Male: L'art reliyieux du 13' e s. en France, pp. 70 ff.

174 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

and of political economy and of mysticism. More
over, like a musical sound in its harmonic scale, the
same doctrine reverberates throughout the forms of
artistic and common life. And it could he pointed
out readily how the literature of the period is per
meated with it, — how the Roman dc la Hose read
in the feudal castles; how great didactic poems such
as the Kataille des Septs Arts of Henri d'Andeli,
the lienart Contrefcdt, the Manage des Septs Arts
et des Septs Vcrtus; how Chaucer's Parlcmcnt of
Foulcs or his Canterbury Tales are filled with
philosophical theories borrowed from Alan of Lille,
Avicenna, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Bradwardine
and others."'5 The same may be said of the Canzone
of Guido Cavalcante24 and of the poems of Dante.

Thus, for example, Dante's DC Monareliia draws
its inspiration from the theory of the four causes;
it invokes the scholastic theory of the proprium, in
order to justify its claim that man's good consists
in the development of his intelligence;25 it takes as
its authority Gilbert de la Porree, "mayister sex
principiorum" i it constructs "polysyllogisms in the
second figure";"" it sets forth at length the theory
of liberty for which it employs a definition which

-"• For instance, Chaucer's X tin's Pricxt-'n Tale reproduces the theo
logical determinism of Thomas Bradwardine.

-t For instance, ('<in~iinr. p. 1.-2S, ed. Frcole Hivalta: La Rime <li
Guido Cnvnh-niitt', Florence, 1!)('J.

25 Pars Prirna.

2(1 "Iste polysyllogismus currit per secundam figuram."

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 175

expresses the feudal mentality (suimet et non al-
terius est) ; it observes that it is easier to teach phi
losophy to one who is utterly innocent of knowledge
about it than to those who are replete with erron
eous opinions; it rests at one point, on the precept
which expresses so admirably the unifying tendency
of the time: "quod iiotcst fieri per unum inelius est
fen per unum quam per plura'j27 it likens the rela
tion of petty prince and monarch to that of the
practical and the speculative intellect, inasmuch as
directions for conduct pass to the former from the
latter. As for the Divine Comedy, it is full of phi
losophy, notwithstanding the poetical transforma
tion which suffuses the thought with its magical
charm. While Dante is no systematic philosopher,
nevertheless he is eclectic and the influence of
philosophical systems is everywhere evident in his
thought; in hands so expert the work of art receives
every doctrinal impression like soft and pliable wax.
One could show how the statues of the cathedral
churches of Chartres or of Laon or of Paris, for ex
ample, and the frescoes and miniatures of the thir
teenth century generally, reflect in design and in
colour the philosophical thought of the period ; how
the great painters from the fourteenth century to
the seventeenth century owe much of their artistic
inspiration to scholastic themes; how the termin
ology of that same philosophy makes no small con
tribution to the ever increasing modern vocabulary,

27 See above, p. 110.

170 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

especially in philosophy ;2S how scholastic definitions
have entered into English literature and French
literature; how some of the thirteenth century hagi-

23 The scholastic terms become "current coin," as Saintsbury ob
serves; and he adds: "Even the logical fribble, even the logical
jargonist was bound to be exact. Now exactness was the very thing
which languages, mostly young in actual age . . . wanted most of
all." Periods of European Literature, vol. II (The Flourishing of
Romance and the Rise of Allegory), p. 1C, cf. pp. 20, 21. Cf. Brune-
tiere: "Les definitions de la scholastique n'ont rien de scientifique
au sens veritable du mot; mais elles n'en ont pas moins discipline
1'esprit francais en lui imposant ce besoin de clarte, de precision et
de justesse qui ne laissera pas de contribuer pour sa part a la
fortune de notre prose ... A coup siir, nous ne pourrons pas ne pas
lui etre reconnaissants de nous avoir appris a composer; et la,
comme on sait, dans cet equilibre de la composition, dans cette
subordination du detail a I'idee de rensemble, dans cette juste pro
portion de parties, la sera 1'un des traits eminents et caracte>is-
tiques de la lilterature francaise." Manuel de Vhistoire de la lit-
tf'rature franqaise, Paris, 1898, pp. 24-25.

Shakespeare is acquainted with scholastic doctrines. For example,
the "quiddities" of Hamlet (Act V, sc. i, "Where be his quiddities
now?") is a scholastic term; it moans "realities" and not "snblilities"
(common glossary). Again Hamlet (Act I, sc. v) speaks of "table
of my memory" and

"All forms, all pressures past
That youth and observation copied there."

This is an allusion to the ''formae ft species impressae." And again,
he is using scholastic thought when he says:

"Sense sure you have,

Else could you not have motion." (Act III, sc. iv)
recalling the doctrine that movement presupposes sense-perception.
That "godlike" reason differentiates man from beast (Act. IV, se. iv)
is also scholastic doctrine.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 177

ographers make use of the methods of division and
the technical terms of scholasticism; and how en
tire doctrines drawn from scholasticism are con
densed in the terse sayings of popular speech. In
deed, these influences are so far reaching and so di
verse that no student of history or of political and
social science or of art or of literature in the Mid
dle Ages can safely ignore the philosophy of that
period.

But however important and interesting these in
fluences (the dynamic relations) may be, they are
not more significant for our proper understanding
of the scholastic philosophy than is the harmonious
equilibrium (the static relations) considered in the
preceding chapters. And hence, to comprehend
fully and to estimate that philosophy aright we
must proceed to consider what belongs to it in its
own constitution. To that end we shall enter into
its doctrinal content.

It will be impossible of course to consider all of
the manifold and extensive doctrinal realms which
scholastic philosophy covers. We shall therefore
limit ourselves to those doctrinal realms which are
most intimately connected witli the civilization.
Namely, intellectualism because it permeates the
entire life of the century, although it belongs prop
erly to psychology (Chapter VIII) ; metaphysics,
because it is the foundation of the whole scholastic
philosophy (Chapter IX) ; social philosophy be
cause it is intimately bound up with the political

178 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

and religious life (Chapters X and XI) ; and,
finally, the conception of human progress, because
for them as for all energetic humanity it is the
mainspring of life (Chapter XII).

CHAPTER EIGHT

INTELLECTUALISM

i. Intellectualism in ideology. ii. In epistemology. iii,
la psychology (free volition), iv. More generally (psychol
ogy, logic, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics), v. In other forms
of culture.

INTELLECTUALISM is a doctrine which places all the
nobility, all the intensity, the whole value of psychi
cal life in the act of knowing. No philosophy is
more "intellectualistic" than mediaeval scholasti
cism. It is a doctrine of light. Long before Des
cartes, — but from another point of view — Thomas
Aquinas and Duns Scotus emphasized the impor
tance of clear intellectual insight. The scholastic
conception of clear knowledge is. not only promi
nent in their psychology; it also penetrates all the
other departments of their philosophy, so that intel-
lectualism is at the same time a doctrine and a
method.

Considered in its ideological aspect, scholastic in-
tellectualism is a brilliant form of idealism,1 and
places the philosophers of the Middle Ages in the
family of Plato, Plotinus, Descartes, Leibnitz, and

i With the term, idealism, I refer to the ideological conception
which establishes a difference in kind between sense perception and
intellectual knowledge.

180 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

Kant. This will appear from a simple example. I
look at two black horses drawing a carriage. All
that my senses perceive in these external data re
ceives a particular dress, which is temporal arid spa
tial.2 But I possess another power of representing
to myself the real. The intellect draws out of this
sensible content the ideas of motion, of muscular
force, of horse, of life, of being. It does away with
the concrete conditions which, in the sensible per
ception, bind the real to a particular state; it "ab
stracts" the ffquod quid cst," the what of a thing.

One might multiply examples at will; but they
would only bring out the more clearly that we have
abstract ideas without number, — ideas, for ex
ample, of qualities and forms and quantities and
action and passions arid so on. Indeed one pos
sesses a very treasure of these abstract ideas; they
are as manifold as the kinds of reality implied in
the complex data of sense perception, — out of
which the abstract idea is always drawn. Nihil cst
in intcJlectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu. For,
in the scholastic view, to abstract is the law of the
intellect; its function of abstraction is as normal
as is the bodily process of digestion. The moment
the intellect enters into contact with reality, it re
acts upon that reality, — its food, as it were — by as
similating it to itself and therefore by divesting it
of every particularized condition.

2 Sensus non est cognoscitivus nisi particulariura. Thomas Aqui
nas, Summa Contra Gentiles, lib. II, cap. LXVI.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 181

The question naturally arises, just how does the
intellect form these abstract ideas through contact
with concrete objects of sense? The scholastic
would reply by reference to his theory of the intel-
Icctus agens. But this would take us too far afield
for our purposes here.3 Their conclusion alone is
significant for our present study; namely, abstract
knowledge differs from sense perception not in de
gree but in kind. For, the content of our abstract
ideas,— the motion and force and life of our horses
and carriages, in the above illustration — is quite in
dependent of the particular ties of time and space,
and of all material conditions in which reality as
perceived by the senses is involved. Consequently,
abstract knowledge is superior to sense perception;
abstraction is the royal privilege of man. This
superiority of intellect is as much a matter of grate
ful pride to the scholastics as it was to Plato and
to Aristotle.

Intellectualism furnishes also a solution in the
field of epistemology, — the problem of the value of
knowledge; for it establishes truth on a firm foun
dation, while at the same time it fixes the limits of
reason. Truth is something which pertains to the
intellect. "For truth consists in saying that a being
is when it is, or that it is not when it is not."4 Con-

s For detailed account of this conception see D. Mercier, Psychol
ogic, I.ouvain, 1912, vol. II, pp. 39 ff.
< Thomas Aquinas, Perihermeneias, I, 3.

182 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

sequently certitude, which is nothing but a firm
assent to truth, is a possession of understanding and
reason; it does not depend on will or on sentiment
or on pragmatical efficiency. Here is one of the
basic differences between scholastic philosophy and
an important contemporary tendency in epistemol-
ogy, which insists on some "non-intellectualistic"
criterion of certitude.5

The intellect grasps "being": it can somehow as
similate all that is: intellectus potest quodammodo
omnia fieri. Moreover, when it grasps being, it is
infallible. "In the figure of Ezekiel," writes Meis-
ter Eckhart, who with his wonderful power for
imagery expresses splendidly this particular idea,
"the intellect is that mighty eagle, with wide reach
of wing, which descended upon Lebanon and seized
the cedar's marrow as its prey, — that is to say, the
constitution of the thing — and plucked the topmost
bloom of foliage."6 There is no error in the under
standing itself; it is always true as regards being,
its object proper.7 Error lies only in the judge-

5 For fuller details see my Histoire de l« Philosophie Mcdievalc,
p. 246 .

s Intellectus cnim cst in figura aquila ilia grandis Eze. 17 longo
membrorum ductu, que vcnit ad Lybanum et tulit medullam cedri,
id est, principia rei, et sumniitatem frondium ejus avulsit. Edit.
Denifle (Arcliiv fiir Litteraiitr und KircJiengeschichte des Mittel-
alters, 1886, p. 566).

7 Intellectus circa proprium objectum semper verus est; unde et
seipso numquam decipitur; sed omnis deceptio accidit in intellectu
et aliquo inferiori, puta phantasia vel aliquo hujusmodi. Thomas
Aquinas, Summa Theol., 1% q. XCIV, art. 4.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 183

ment, when we combine two concepts and declare
that their contents coincide, although in reality they
are in disagreement. It follows from this that
reason in our life has genuine worth ; it is not a way
ward will-o'-the-wisp which leads him astray who
trusts to it, — it is a torch which illumines.

But that which the intellect understands is only
a small measure of reality; therefore, one must un
derstand the limits of reason. Intellectual knowl
edge is imperfect and inadequate. First, because
our ideas are derived from the content of sense-per
ception, from which follows that we cannot know
properly more than the realities of sense; accord
ingly, the supersensible can be known only by an
alogy. From this point of view, the human intelli
gence is no longer the powerful eagle, but the
winged creature of night, the bat (noctua], which
faces with difficulty the full light of the sun, — the
supersensible realm. Moreover, even the corporeal
reality is apprehended by imperfect processes. We
know only the general determinations of being, no
tions of what is common, for instance, to live or to
move in various living or moving beings. The na
ture of the individual as such escapes us, — even
though, with Duns Scotus, we derive a kind of con
fused intuition of the concrete and singular. Fur
thermore, these general notions do not even mani
fest what is specific in the essences which are
known ; indeed, we employ the same common notion
of life for plants and animals and men, and we are

184 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

condemned to ignorance of the innermost reality
peculiar to the lii'e in each class of these living be-
irigs. On all sides, therefore, reality surpasses
knowledge; the unknowahle encompasses us round
ahout.

Ill

Yet this very same reason, at once so glorified
and humbled, is the queen of conscious life. It
rules the appetitive life, by restraining the passions
and lower appetites. Keason shines as a torch
which lights and directs the will, necessary or free.
We will only what we know as good — niliil voHtum
nisi cognitum — and already this precedence of in
tellect over will establishes a dependence of the will
on the intellect.

It is because \ve are reasonable beings that free
volitions are psychologically possible. Thomas
Aquinas, and Duns Scotus too8 — so long regarded
as holding here a different view — gives a remark
able intellectual explanation of liberty which is not
found in any preceding system.

We are drawn to the good. This means that we

are inclined to will whatever reality is presented as

capable of satisfying a certain indwelling tendency,

—our tendency, namely, toward what is considered

to be suitable to us. Just as the intellect conceives

s See P. Minges, 1st Duns Scotus Tmleterminist? Baiimker's-
Beitriicie, 190.5, V, 4. ff. my Histoire dc la Philosophie Mtditvale,
p. 460.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 185

being in the abstract, as integral being, so it con
ceives the good as such, the general good. For
when the intellect acts, it obeys the law of its activi
ty; and in doing so it abstracts the good as such,
and sees in this (or any) being the good which it
contains. Only the complete good can draw us ir
resistibly, because it alone satisfies this intellectual
tendency of our nature.0 It is then impossible for
the will not to will it. If the Infinite Good should
manifest Himself, the soul would be drawn towards
it, as iron is attracted by the magnet. The attrac
tions which the martyrs felt for the benefits of this
life, at the very moment when they preferred to die,
remarks Duns Scotus, is the sign and effect of this
necessary tendency toward the good, the good as a
totality.

But during our earthly life the good never ap
pears to us unadulterated; for every good is limited.
The moment we reflect, the limitation is perceived;
every good is good only under certain aspects; it
contains deficiencies. Then the intellect places me
before two intellectual judgements. For example,
it is good for me to undertake a journey; not to un
dertake it contains also some good. Behold, I am
called upon to judge my own judgements. Which
judgement shall I choose? The will must decide,—
and it decides freely, for neither judgement enjoins

fl Objertnm autem voluntatis quae est appetitus humanus, est uni-
versale bonum, sicut objeotum intellectus est universale verum.
Thomas Aquinas. Snmma Theol., la^ae, q. II, art. 8.

180 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

a necessary adhesion. We will freely the good
which we choose, not because it is the greater good,
but because it is some good. In a sense we may
say that our choice stops with the good which we
consider the best. But, in the last analysis, this is
true only if we add, that the will freely intervenes
in the decision. In other words, it is under the in
fluence of the will that the practical intellect makes
its judgement, that the one or the other course of ac
tion is the better. The will can in reality give its
preference to either of the alternatives. At the
moment of definite choice, deliberation ceases and
gives place to decision. So Thomas and Duns
Scotus avoided the psychological determinism
which puzzled other scholastics, — such as Godfrey
of Fontaines and John Buridan.

Thus, liberty resides in the will, but it has its
roots in the judgement. Consequently, a free act is
a deliberate act, and entirely reflective. An act of
this kind is not a common thing. Indeed, whole
days pass during which we do not make intellectual
decisions, — that is, in the scholastic meaning of the
word.

Scholastic intellectualism is quite evident, not
only in the remaining brandies of psychology, but
also in logic, in metaphysics, in aesthetics, and in
morals.

Abstraction, which is the fundamental operation

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 187

of the intellect, establishes the spirituality of the
soul; for a heing capable of producing thoughts, the
content of which is free from the chains of matter,
is itself above matter.10 It justifies the natural
union of soul and body, because the normal func
tion of the organism cannot be dissociated from the
act of thinking. It furnishes an argument in fa
vour of a new union of the soul with the body in
the resurrection, because the body is the indispen
sable instrument of intellectual activity.

Is it necessary to observe that every theory of
science, or scientific logic, is incomprehensible with
out intellectualism? Scientific judgements are
necessary judgements, laws; and they are not of
necessity without abstraction and generalization.
On abstraction is based the theory of the syllogism,
the value of first principles, of definitions, of di
visions, and of everything which enters into con
structive procedure. Before Henry Poincare, the
scholastics had said, "Science will be intellectual or
it will cease to be."

The perception of a work of art, and of its beauty,
is also an act of the intellect. Beauty ought to be
resplendent, claritas pulclui, it ought to reveal, and
in a striking way, the internal order that governs
beauty. It speaks to the faculty of knowing, and
above all to the intellect.

What is true of the perception of a work of art
is true also of its production. Man's artistic fac-

10 Thomas Aquinas, De Anima, lib. Ill, lect. vii.

188 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

ulty, — by virtue of which the carpenter and the
sculptor achieve their results — consists in a right
use of reason; for the reason alone can subordi
nate the means to the end. Ars nihil aliud cst quam
ratio recta aliquorum opcrum faciendorum. The
"virtue of art," virtus artis, — for the humble artisan
as for the gifted artist — consists far more in a per
fection of the spirit than in any virtuosity or muscu
lar dexterity.10"

A like sovereignty obtains in the moral realm.
Reason teaches us our duties and guides our con
science. Keason gives a characteristic significance
to destiny and happiness. To be happy is above
all to know, because happiness consists in the high
est activities of our highest psychical power, which
is understanding.11 Even in this life, knowledge is
a great consolation. Beatitude, or the perfect
goodness destined for man, — that alone which phi
losophy considers — would be a "happiness of ab
stractions," a goodness founded on abstract knowl
edge of the laws and the being of the sensible world,

io» Summa Theol., l^Sae, q. LVII, art. 3: Utrum habitus intel-
lectualis qui est ars, sit virtus. Read all of arts. 3, <t, and 5, for in
teresting suggestions on the iiitelleetualistic theory of art. Of. my
study, L'Oeuvre d'art et la Bcautt, Louvain, 1920, ch. VI.

11 Oportet quod (beatitude) sit optima operatic hominis. Optima
autem operatio hominis est quae est optimae potentiae respectu
optimi ohjecti. Optima autem potentia est intellectus, etc. Summa
Theol, lagae, q. HI, art. 5.

IN THE MIDDLE ACES 189

a knowledge and love of the Creator in His works.12
The supremacy of reason appears also in meta
physics, where it explains the fundamental order
of things, which rests entirely on Divine Reason.
It manifests itself in the immutability of natural as
well as moral law, which God could not change,
without contradicting Eternal Reason, that is to
say, without destroying Himself. No will, not
even the will of God, can change the nature of
truth; and truth can no more contradict truth than
a circle can he quadrate.

Finally, this same supremacy of reason is appar
ent in their whole theory of the state, where gov
ernment is conceived as being properly a govern
ment of insight; from whose laws everything arbi
trary ought to be excluded; where the elective sys
tem is justified because it favours the exercise of

12bls

reason.

12 Compare the following excerpt from an unedited text of the
thirteenth century (as in Grabtnann, "Forschungen iibcr die latein-
ischen Aristoteles-Uebersctxenigcn d. XIII Jhr.," p. T6 in Baiim-
ker's-Bcitrcige, 1916, XVII, 5-6): "Cum omiic desiderii com
pos et maxime creatura rationalis appetat suain peri'ectionem, surii-
ina vero et finalis perfectio hominis sit in cognitione unius intellec-
tualis veri et in aniore unius ineommutabilis boni, quod est nossc
et amare suum creatorem, et medium praecipue inducens ad cog-
noscendum et amandum creatorem sit cognitio considerationc operum
creatoris, etc."

i2bl8See Ch. XL

190 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

But this clear-cut intellectualism and love of pre
cision, appears also in other forms of culture of the
thirteenth century. It inspires even the smallest
detail of that doctrinal structure elaborated by the
doctors of theology, giving to each element of be
lief an apologetic and rational interpretation. It
is found in the works of canonists, who reason out
the ecclesiastical law, just as jurists reason out the
Roman law. Intellectualism is found also in the
explanation of rites and symbols, the manifold
meanings of which such a man as William of Mcnde
endeavoured to unfold in his Rationale Divinorum.
It is further found in the Roman dc la Hose of the
poet Jean de Meung, where Reason is personified
and fills the poem with long discourses, as she filled
with her dictates the lives of mediaeval men.13

The same intellectualism and the same clearness
appears also in the Gothic architecture and sculp-

is It is, then, not surprising that Dante, educated in scholastic
circles, wrote these words in his De Monarchia (lib. 1): "Reason is
to the individual what Ihe father is to the family, or what the mayor
is to the city. It is master. In all matters reason makes its voice
heard." The liunqnct, or Convilo, addresses itself to those who
hunger for knowledge, and contemplates making all humanity par
ticipate in knowledge, — that "good desired of all," that supreme
form of happiness. In the Divine Comedy Dante exalts the man who
sacrifices his life in the promotion of knowledge. Virgil represents
human knowledge, which the soul must acquire in its plenitude, he-
fore heing admitted to the divine mysteries. And in the Paradiso,
each of the elect enjoys to the full that beatitude "which he can
conceive."

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 191

ture, where everything is reasoned and rational.
Has it not been said with justice that Gothic archi
tecture is an application of logic in poems in stone,
that it speaks as forcibly and clearly to the mind as
to the eye? It is nothing more than the most logi
cal application of the laws of gravitation. The
pointed arch windows and the double arched vaults
express their function admirably, as do also the sup
ports and the buttresses. Everywhere we find
beauty rationalized; no superfluous ornaments,
nothing of that fantastic decoration which spoiled
the Gothic idea in the fifteenth century. In those
lines of clearness and purity which we see in the
naves of the cathedral of Rheims, Paris, Amiens,
and Chartres all is sober and reasonable. The walls
have let themselves be cleft in order to admit the
light, — the light filled first, however, with those
dreams imparted by the glass; and the felt need of
light issued finally in creating churches that are
transparent, as it were, where all is subordinated to
the idea of illumination.

Nor is it otherwise with the sculpture of the thir
teenth century, the form of which is vivified by clear
and severe concepts. "The iconography of the
thirteenth century," writes M. Male, "aims to speak
to the intelligence and not to the feelings. It is
doctrinal and theological, that is to say, logical and
rational; but there is nothing pathetic or tender
about it. The great religious compositions speak
to the mind, and not to the heart. Consider, for

192 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

instance, how the artists of the thirteenth century
conceive the Nativity: Mary reclines on a couch
with head averted; the Child is not in a crib, but
upon an altar; a lamp is suspended over His head
between parted curtains."1 Every point directs
the mind to dogma and to doctrine. Human emo
tion is silent before such a conception, and the same
is true when the tranquil Virgin bears in her arms,
or upon her knees, the Infant Saviour; or when
she assists, in her grief, but without weakness, at
the crucifixion of her Son. It is only after the
fourteenth century that art becomes tender, that
the Virgin smiles and weeps, and "the symbolic
apple which the serious Virgin of the thirteenth
holds in her hand to remind us that she is the sec
ond Kve, becomes a plaything to prevent the child
Jesus from crying."1

Society is also intellectualized, in its entirety, in
the sense that the whole age craves for order. Of
course the thirteenth century is filled with quarrels
and revolts, and hostilities break out everywhere;
this signifies only that it was no more possible to
realize fully a social ideal in that age than in any
other. But the ideal existed none the less and it
was efficacious. The relations of vassals and suze
rains and of the subjects and kings, the participa
tion of the feudal classes in the prerogatives of gov
ernment, the establishment of national parliaments,

i* Male, L'firt rellylt'ii.r <lit !•'•'(' sir rip en Frnnrc-, 1010, p. 221.
is Ibid., p. 239.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 193

the codification of civil and canon law, the organi
zation of crafts and guilds, the absolute and inter
national hierarchy of the Church, the subordination
of states to the moral authority of the Pope, — all
of these were regarded by the intellectual classes as
the best means of establishing things in their proper
places. Order, said Thomas Aquinas, reveals in
every case the intervention of mind. "Intellectus
ftolius est or 'dinar -e"1 Only the mind is able to set
things in order. Naturally, therefore, intellectual-
ism makes its appearance in everything.

18 In Ethic, ad Nicomarh., Lect. I, 7.

CHAPTER NINE

A PLURALISTIC CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD

i. What metaphysics is. ii. Static aspects of reality, iii.
Dynamic aspects; the central doctrine of act and potency,
iv. Application to substance and accident ; to matter and form,
v. The problem of individuation. vi. Human personality,
vii. God: as pure existence.

To inquire into the conception of the world of
fered by the scholastics is to enter into the realm
of their metaphysics. Real beings exist outside of
us. We know them first by means of sense-per
ception. Then the intellect divests the realities of
fered by sense-perception of their individualizing
and particular features, so that the object is laid
hold of as abstract and permits generalization.
Metaphysical inquiry is thus based upon abstract
knowledge both of what lies at the heart of cor
poreal beings and of determinations which belong
to all being.

What is reality? To make clear the scholastic
answer to this question, I propose to consider re
ality successively under two aspects: first, the static
aspect, or reality in the state of repose; second, the
dynamic aspect, or reality in the state of change.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 195

I use these technical expressions provisionally; they
will become clearer as we proceed.

Let us suppose for the moment an impossibility ;
namely, that the whirling universe in the midst of
which we live should stop suddenly, and that in this
state of universal repose we could take a snap-shot
of this static universe. In this state, of what would
the real world consist? Scholasticism would reply:
of an indefinite number of beings, independent, in
their existence, each from the other. Each man,
each animal, each plant, each mono-cellular organ
ism, each particle of matter exists by itself, in its
impenetrable individuality. The individual alone
exists. Such is the fundamental doctrine of schol
astic metaphysics and it was inherited from the
twelfth century. It belongs to natural science, and
not to philosophy, to tell us what that individual is.
Is it the atom, the ion, the electron? Scholastic
metaphysics would follow modern science to the
innermost division of reality. Whatever it may be,
it is only the individual that exists.

Thus, scholasticism is a pluralistic philosophy,
and the sworn enemy of monism, which teaches the
fusion of all realities in one. Accordingly, Thomas
Aquinas speaks of the Fons Vitae of Avicebron, an
apologetic of Neo-Platonic and Arabian panthe
ism, as being a poisoned well rather than a fountain
of life.

196 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

Let us consider more closely one ol' these myriad
individual realities, which surround us on all sides,
—for example, that oak-tree planted yonder. Thc
individuality here presented includes many ele
ments: it has a determinable thickness and height,
a cylindrical form of trunk, a roughness of bark,
a somber color of foliage, a place which it occupies
in the forest, a certain action of its foliage upon
the ambient air, a specific subjection to inlluence as
it absorbs the nourishing sap from the ground.
These are all so many determinations of being or,
to use the scholastic language, so many classes,
categories, — categories of quantity, quality, action,
passion, time, space and relation.

Now, all of these classes, or categories, presup
pose a yet more fundamental one. Can you con
ceive, asks Aristotle, the reality of walking with
out some one who walks? Can you conceive quan
tity, thickness, and the rest, without something,—
our oak-tree above — which possesses it? Neither
the action of walking nor the extension of quantity
can be conceived apart from a subject in which they
exist. And it is such a subject which Aristotle and
the scholastics call substance, — the fundamental
category, as distinguished from the other classes,
which they call accidents (accidentia) .

Not only do we conceive corporeal realities in
terms of substance and accidents, — and no philos
ophy denies the existence in our minds of these two
concepts — but also the substance and the accidents

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 197

exist independently and outside of our minds. In
the order of existence, as in the order of our
thought, suhstance and accident are relative to each
other. One who succeeds in proving the external
existence of the accident1 (for instance, the thick
ness of the tree), also proves the existence of the
substance (that is, the tree). If the act of walking
is not an illusion but something real, the same must
be equally true of the substantial being who walks,
without whom there would be no act of walk
ing. The substance, or subject, exists in and by it
self; it is self-sufficient. But it is also the support
of all the rest, which therefore are called accidentia
(id quod accidit alicui rei) .

As for my own substance, the substance of my
self as a human being, — that is personality — there
is the witness of consciousness, by its several ac
tivities, to the existence of just such a substantial
Ego. In thinking and speaking, and so on, I at
tain to my own existing substance. The scholastics
were essentially familiar with the cogito ergo sum,
Without permanence of personality, memory would
be inexplicable. If I were only a collection of
ephemeral activities, what Taine calls a collection
of sky-rockets of consciousness ("gerbes lumineu-
ses") , how could one sky-rocket remember an-

i Scholasticism proves the objectivity of our external sense-per
ception by the mark of passivity (of which we are conscious) and
by the principle of causality: quidquid movetur ab alio movetur.
We are conscious of being passive in external sensation; conse
quently we do not create it, — therefore it must come from a non-ego.

198 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

other? How could 1 then remember in maturity
the acts of my boyhood? But, not only do I re
member such aets, I am also conscious of being the
same personality; my acts disappear, my body
changes, but I remain a subject independent of
these acts and changes.

The frequent misunderstanding of the scholastic
theory of substance rests upon two misconcep
tions of what that theory involved: first, that one
knows wherein one substance differs from another;
second, that substance is something underlying ac
cidental realities. Now, as regards the former,
scholastic philosophy never pretended to know
wherein one substance differed from another in the
external world. It thought of substance as an idea
resulting from reasoning, which does not instruct
regarding what is specific in each of the substances;2
one knows that they are and must be, but never
icltat they are. Indeed, the idea of substance is es
sentially thin. And the same may be said of the
Kgo, as the substance best known to each individual
person; consciousness witnesses to its existence, but
never to its nature, — as Descartes erroneously sup
posed. A proof that consciousness alone does not
instruct us regarding our own nature, says scholas
ticism, is the discussion among philosophers on
the nature of the soul. The second misconception
above mentioned, may be readily disposed of. To
imagine that something lies behind or underneath
the accidents, as the door underlies the painted

2 See above, p. 184.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 199

colour, is simply a misinterpretation of the scholastic
theory. Locke especially was here in error; of
course he had no difficulty in criticizing this concep
tion as ridiculous. But this interpretation is totally
wrong. In the scholastic view, suhstance and ac
cidents are really one and the same concrete exist
ing thing. Indeed, substance is that which confers
individuality upon the particular determinations, or
accidents. It is therefore the substance of the oak-
tree which constitutes the foundation of its individ
uality, and which thus confers individuality upon
its qualities, the dimensions of the oak and all the
train of accidental determinations which belong to
its concrete individuality.

This "tout ensemble" of substance and accidental
determinations, both taken together, exists by vir
tue of one existence alone, the existence of the con
crete oak-tree which we have considered as fixed
and motionless in the static instant above described.

Ill

But such a picture of the world is not a possible
picture; for nothing is motionless. Reality is in
volved in change and in evolution. Chemical bod
ies are in constant change, in all stages of their ex
istence, be it liquid or gaseous or solid; living or
ganisms are changing; our globe as a whole is
ceaselessly borne along in a twofold movement ; the
sun with its train of planets is subject to the law of
change, and the same is true of the stars scattered

200 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

throughout the immensity of space. Substance
and accident: all is becoming. The oak springs
from the acorn, it becomes tall and massive, its
vital activities are forever changing, and the tree
itself will disappear. In order to understand the
full meaning of ( metaphysics, it is necessary to
throw being into the melting pot of change.

Thus the static point of view, or the world con
sidered in the state of repose, must be supple
mented by the dynamic point of view, or that of
the world drawn into becoming. Here appears a
further scholastic conception; namely, the well-
known theory of act and potency, which forms, in
my opinion, the key-stone in the vault of the meta
physical structure. This theory is a general analy
sis of what change implies. The scholastics get it
from Aristotle, but give to it a breadth and exten
sion unknown to the Greek philosopher. What
is change, any change? It is the real passage from
one state to another. Now, they observe, when one
being passes from state A to state B, it must al
ready possess in A the germs of its future determi
nation in B. It has the power, the potency, to be
come B before it actually does so. This is
demanded by the principle of sufficient reason — an
absolute principle to which all that is must be obed
ient, under penalty of not being at all. To deny
this sort of preexistence is equivalent to denying
change from one state to another, the evolution of
reality. What we call change would then be a series

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 201

of instantaneous appearances and disappearances
of substances, having no internal connections what
ever, each with duration infinitesimally small. The
oak is potentially in the acorn; if it were not there
potentially, how could it ever issue from it? On
the other hand, the oak is not potentially in a peb
ble, rolled about by the sea, and which outwardly
might present a close resemblance to the acorn.
Act or actuality (the evreAexeio, of Aristotle, the actus
of the scholastics) is any present sum-total of per
fection. Potency (8iW/us potentia of the scholas
tics) is the aptitude to become that perfection. It
is imperfection and non-being, if you will; but it is
not mere nothing, because non-being considered in
an already existing subject is endowed with the
germ of future actualization.

The coupling of act and potency therefore pene
trates reality in its inmost depths. It explains all
the great conceptions of scholastic metaphysics.
Especially does it explain those two great doctrines,
in which we shall follow the play of act and po
tency, — namely, the doctrine of substance and ac
cident, and the doctrine of matter and form.

The doctrine of substance and accident is thus
rounded out and clarified by the coupling of act
and potency; indeed, an adequate understanding
of the former requires the latter. Thus, to say that
a being already constituted in its substantial de-

202 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

termination is changing, means that it is actually
realizing its potentialities. A child is already po
tentially the powerful athlete he will some day be
come. If he is destined to become a mathematician,
then already in the cradle he possesses this power,
or predisposition, whereas another infant is de
prived of it. Quantitative and qualitative change,
change in the activities brought about by actual
being and in the activity undergone, — all of this
was able to be before being in fact.

Considered in the light of this theory, the doc
trine of substance and accident loses its nai've and
false significance. A growing oak, a living man.
a chemical individuality of any kind, eacli of the
myriad individual beings, is indeed an individual
substance becoming, because its quantity, qualities,
activities, relations are the becoming of its poten
tialities. Leibnitz was really following this thomis-
tic doctrine when he said: "The present is preg
nant with the future." But more than this. While
Leibnitz also taught the eternity and the immuta
bility of substances, which he called monads,
Thomas and the scholastics go further into the
heart of change. It is not only the accidents
which change when, for example, the oak grows,
or its wood becomes tougher, or its place changes
when it is transplanted, or its activities are re
newed as it develops; but the very substances them
selves are carried into the maelstrom of change,
and nature makes us witness to the unceasing spec-

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 203

tacle of their transformations. The oak dies; and
from the slow work of its decomposition are born
chemical bodies of most diverse kinds. An electric
current traverses the molecule of water; and behold
hydrogen and oxygen arise.

All of this is essentially scholastic doctrine.
When one substance changes into another, each
has a quite different specificity. Substances differ
not in degree but in kind. An oak never change^
into another oak, nor a particle of water into an
other particle of water. But out of a dying oak, or
a decomposed particle of water, are born chemical
bodies, which appear with quite different activities,
quantities, relations, and so on.3 The differences
of all these activities, quantities, and the rest, are
for us the only means of knowing the substances of
things, because the activity of a thing gives its
measure of perfection and springs out of it : "agcrc,
seqidtur esse/} And hence corresponding to irre
ducible activities and qualities there must be irre
ducible substances. Of course, the scholastics were
unable to observe, as we can, the chemical activities
of corporeal bodies. But this is simply a matter of
application and the principle remains. The sub
stance of hydrogen is quite different from- that of
water; this is what I have called the specificity of

3 "There is not the slightest parity between the passive and the
active powers of the water and those of the oxygen and the hydrogen
which have given rise to it," says Huxley in Lay Sermons, ("The
Physical Basis of Life"), New York, 1874, p. 136.

204 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

objects. A corporeal substance cannot be more nor
less than what it is. Water is plainly water
or it is something quite different; it cannot have
degrees of being water. Just as a person cannot
be more or less man than another man. "Essentia
11011 suscipit plus vcl minus." Accordingly, the
world offers the greatest diversity of irreducible
substantial perfections.

But let us consider more closely this phenome
non of. basic change, from one substance into an
other or into several other substances, — for in
stance, water becoming hydrogen and oxygen. If
Thomas had been invited to interpret this phenome
non, he would have said: that the substance of the
water transformed itself into new substances, hy
drogen and oxygen, and that the hydrogen was in
the water potentially, or in promise. But then, he
would add, every substance that comes into being
consists at bottom of two constituent elements; on
the one hand, there must be something common to
the old state and to the new, and on the other hand
there must be a specific principle. That which is
common to the two stages of the process is an in-
determination found equally in the water and in
the hydrogen-oxygen. Otherwise the one could
not change into the other; no transformation of
water into its component parts would occur, but
instead there would be annihilation (of the water)
followed by creation (of the hydrogen-oxygen).
As for the specific principle, this must exist at each

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 205

stage of the process as a peculiar and proper factor
whereby the water as such differs from the hydro
gen-oxygen as such.

With this we come to the theory of primary
matter and substantial form, — so often misunder
stood. This is really nothing but an application of
the theory of act and potency to the problem of the
transformation of bodies. Primary matter is
the common indeterminate element or substratum,
capable of receiving successively contrary deter
minations. The substantial form determines this
unformed and potential fundament, and fixes the
being altogether in its individuality and in its spe
cific mode of existence. Each man, each lion, each
oak, each chemical individual, possesses its form;
that is, its principle of proper perfection. And
the principle of perfection, or of the form which
is immanent in the oak, is not reducible to that
which belongs to the man, or to the molecule of
hydrogen.

All that belongs to the perfection of a being (its
existence, its unity, its activities) is more closely
related to the form, while all that belongs to its
imperfect state (its indetermination) is more close
ly related to the matter, — and especially is this true
of the quantitative extension of corporeal being.
To be extended in space, in divisible quantity, is
an imperfection ; and no really 'distinct beings could
exist, were it not for the unifying function of
form assembling the scattered elements of extend-

206 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

ed matter. No doctrine really better explains the
mixture of perfection and imperfection, of good
and evil, which are rooted in the depths of all
corporeal being.

Thus the corporeal world mounts stage by stage
from one species to another, nature passes from one
step to another, from one species to another, fol
lowing a certain definite order. Nature changes
water into hydrogen and oxygen, but it does not
change a pebble into a lion ; nor can one make a saw
out of wool. It evolves bodies according to affini
ties and successive progressions, the deciphering of
which is the mission of the particular sciences, which
we can know only by patient observation. If there
are any saltations in nature, they are never capri
cious. In every corporeal substance, at every stage
and at every instant, the germs of the substantial
states are found which are to be born out of it.
This is the meaning of the formula repeated by the
scholastics, "that primary matter contains poten
tially, or in promise, the series of forms in which it
must dress and redress itself, in the course of its
becoming." To ask, as some do, where the forms
are before their appearance and after their disap
pearance, is to reveal a complete misunderstanding
of the scholastic system. One has no right to re
quire of a doctrine a solution which it does not pre
tend to give. We simply know, by reasoning, that
there must be matter and form, — just as we know
that there must be substances and accidents. In

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 207

their explanation of facts, the scholastics taught
that a given thing must be; but they did not always
teach what that thing is.

This doctrine represents a definitely teleological
interpretation of the universe. For, the successive
stages of change in each of the becoming sub
stances, and the recurrence of the same transfor
mations in the corporeal world, require the inclina
tion on the part of. each being to follow a definite
order in its activity.3" Such inclination in each sub
stance is immanent finality.

To sum up. Two kinds of change suffice to ex
plain the corporeal world. First the becoming of
constituted substance; thus, an oak is in process of
becoming, in its activities, its quantity, its qualities,
its relations, but it retains the same substance.
Second, a change of one substance into another (or
into many other substances) ; such as the change
of an oak into a collection of chemical bodies, when,
under external influences, the disposition of the
primary matter requires a new substantial becom

ing of the whole.

It is impossible here to give a detailed survey of
such an interpretation of the corporeal world. Let
us merely apply this conception of the world to
the famous scholastic problem of "individuation,"

3" The term natura is used to signify the individual substance as
far as it possesses such definite inclination.

208 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

and show how all of these doctrines are employed
for an explanation of humanity.

The problem of individuation (individuatio) in
the scholastic philosophy has a peculiar but re
stricted significance. The problem is: How can
so many distinct individualities of the same sub
stantial perfection, and therefore of the same kind,
exist? Why are there millions and millions of oaks,
and not only one oak, one forma qucrci? Why
should there be millions and millions of human be
ings, and not only one man? Why myriads of
molecules of water, and not only one molecule of
water ? Why not one molecule or ion or electron of
each kind? If this were in fact the case, the world
would still represent a scale of perfection, differing
degree by degree; but there would be no two cor
poreal beings of the same kind. One thing would
differ from another, as the number three differs
from the number four.

The monads of Leibnitz realize in some aspects
such a conception of the world. But the thomistic
solution is more profound and lies in this thesis:
That extended matter, matcria signctta, is the prin
ciple of individuation. In other words, without ex
tension, and extended matter, there would be no
reason why several individuals of the same kind
should exist.

Indeed, a substantial form as such, is foreign to
and indifferent to reduplication; and, as long as one
considers form, one cannot find any reason why

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 209

there should be two identical forms, why one form
should limit itself, instead of retaining within itself
all the capacity of realization. Forma irrecepta est
illimitata. But the question takes on a new aspect
when this form must unite with matter, in order to
exist, and so take on extended existence. My body
has the limitation of extension, and therefore there
is place for your body and for millions of bodies be
sides yours and mine. An oak has a limited exten
sion in space, and at the point where it ceases to fill
space there is also place for many more. And the
same may be said of all corporeal beings in the end
less species within the cosmos.

There is an important consequence, which fol
lows directly from this philosophy. // there exist
some limited beings which are not corporeal beings,
and therefore are pure perfections, pure forms,
(pure Intelligences for instance), then no redupli
cation is possible in that realm of being. They dif
fer from one another as the oak-form differs from
the beech-form or the hydrogen-form.

This last consideration explains why the problem
of individuation is different from the problem of
individuality. Each existing being is an individual
ity; and therefore a pure Intelligence, if existent,
is an individuality.4 But individuation means a

* This theory is all too frequently misunderstood. Tims Henry
Adams erroneously writes as follows: "Thomas admitted that the
angels were universals" (Mont St. Michel and Chartres, p. 364).
This is of course a misunderstanding; incorporeal beings are not

210 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

special restriction of individuality, that is to say a
reduplication of several identical forms in one
group, — hence called specific groups, species.

All the doctrines which we have sought to explain
are to be applied to human beings or human per
sonalities. We are impenetrable and incommuni
cable substances, or personalities. No philosophy
ever insisted more than did the scholastic philos
ophy upon this independence, and upon the dignity
and value of human life, — by virtue of this doctrine
of personality. All kinds of relations exist between
men; for instance, — the family and political rela
tions. But, as we shall see,5 they do not touch di
rectly our innermost substance, which with Leib
nitz we may call "ferociously independent."

A human personality is composed of body and
soul, and the most inward unity of man results from
this combination; the body is primary matter,
the soul is substantial form, and each completes and
permeates the other. Therefore, our soul is not at
all in an unnatural state, when united to our body.
The soul is not to be compared, as does Plato in
the Republic,, to the sea-god Glaucus, as impossible

deprived of individuality because they are without matter. Thomas
Aquinas seems to have written the following in direct contradiction:
"Xon est verum quod substantia separata non sit singularis et indi-
viduum aliquod; alioquin non haberet aliquam operationem." See
his De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas, edit. Parme, 18C5, vol.
XVI, p. 2-21.
s Ch. X, v.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 211

to recognize under the grimy accretions of the sea-
shells and creeping things. On the contrary the
union of soul and body is such that the former re
quires aid from the latter in all her activities.

The becoming of human beings, and their indi-
viduation in mankind, must also be explained by
the doctrines already exposited. The generation of
a child is the becoming of a new substance; but it
includes several stages of a specific kind, each more
perfect than the preceding. The soul is united to
the embryo only when the dispositions of the new
organism are sufficiently perfect to require union
with a human soul. Thus, in the scholastic phi
losophy, it is really the human body, as a product
of human generation, which is the principle of indi-
viduation; it is indeed the precise reason why such
and such a soul, with its greater or lesser
treasure of potentialities, is united to such and such
a body. And although the spiritual and immortal
soul is not a product of generation, nevertheless
the parents as givers of the body to the child assume
the responsibility of fixing the potentialities of the
whole being. The soul may be compared to the
wine which varies in quantity according to the size
of the cup.

There is, however, one very important difference
between the human soul and the form of other be
ings in the corporeal world. For reasons which
we cannot develop here, founded especially upon
the superiority of human knowledge, the human

212 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

soul is of a spiritual nature, that is, it is superior to
corporeal things and therefore immortal. Accord
ingly, a human soul, although it constitutes a whole
with the body, is not the result of the chemical,
physical, and biological activities which explain or
ganic generation. Aristotle had said that the in
tellect came from without (OvpaOfv}. Thomas adds:
the soul is created by God.

VII

We shall now consider, in conclusion, the place
given to the idea of God in the scholastic meta
physics. Their natural theology, or theodicy, is
closely connected with their conception of the world.
It is drawn from the theory of change, which has
been explained above. It is intimately connected
with their whole idea of change, — but especially
with the doctrine of efficient causality.

Change, as we have seen, is the passage from
one state to another, a sort of oscillation by which
the real in potency becomes the real actually, and
so obtains a new perfection. Now the principle of
efficient causality says: No being which changes
can give to itself, without some foreign influence
coming from without, this complement of reality,
by virtue of which it passes from one state into
another. Quidquid movetur ab olio movetur. The
principle of contradiction requires this; and the
principle of contradiction, according to which a
thing cannot in the same aspect both be and not be.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 213

is a law of mental life, as well as a law of reality.
For, if a tiling could change its own state (whether
substantial or accidental) unaided from without, it
would possess before acquiring, — it would already
be what is not yet. This is of course absurd. The
water is in potency of changing into oxygen; but
without the electric current, — without the interven
tion of something else — the water could not, by it
self, give to itself new determinations. This other
tiling by which water changes into oxygen and
hydrogen is called the efficient cause.

However, this active cause is itself carried into
the nexus of becoming. The electrical energy could
not appear without undergoing, in its turn, the
action of other efficient causes. The whole process
expands, very much as when a stone is thrown into
still water the waves spread out from the centre,
each acting upon the next in succession. Moreover,
the process becomes complicated, for every action
of a being A on a being B is doubled by a reaction
of B on A. Nature is an inextricable tissue of effi
cient causes, of becomings, of passages from po
tency to act. Newton's law of gravitation, the law
of the equilibrium of forces, the law of the conser
vation of energy, — these are all so many formulas
which state in precise form the influence of one be
ing upon another.

But, — and there is of course a but — we cannot
continue the process to infinity. For, in that case,
change would be an illusion, and this would involve

214 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

denying the very evidence itself. The initial
motion demands a starting point, an original im
petus. This absolute beginning is possible only
on the condition that a Being exists who is beyond
all change, — in whom nothing can become, and
who is therefore immutable. That being is God.
Now, God cannot set in motion the series of
changes, constituted of act and potency, except by
an impulse which leaves free and undisturbed His
own impassibility. For, however slight the modi
fication which one supposes this act (of changing
others) to cause in Him, it would still be a change,
and hence something new and requiring explana
tion afresh, — by recourse to the intervention of a
still higher being. Thus the process would be end
less, unless God is the "prime mover unmoved."

Let us suppose that one decides to build a house,
and that one wants it to be supported solidly. To
this end he lays deep the foundations Avhich must
support the building. Deep he digs, and still
deeper, and ever deeper, in order to obtain a base
of absolute fixity. But he must finally call a halt
in this work of excavation, under penalty of not
ever beginning the work of building. Thus we
must conclude, from the very existence of the house,
that the builder did in fact halt at some point in
the earth, there to set his first stone.

Just so with the scholastic argument which we
are considering. Change exists as a fact even as
the house exists as a fact. The fact is there; it

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 215

stares us in the face; it fills the universe. If there
were not a halting place in the chain of efficient
causation, the change itself could not exist. One
is in no position to choose whether the world shall
evolve or not; for evolution is the law of the uni
verse itself. To conceive that one may make an
endless regressus in the causal nexus, would be like
conceiving that he might suspend a weight to the
one end of a chain whose other end requires the
ceaseless adding of link upon link, to lengthen out
the chain to infinity!

It all comes then to this: if any fact is real, the
totality of things, without which the reality of that
fact would be compromised, is no less real. It fol
lows, therefore, that scholastic philosophy dem
onstrates God's existence by making His existence
a necessary condition of the explanation of reality.
Accordingly, from the standpoint of metaphysics,
He exists only for the world. Hence God is not,
as one might suppose, a further mystery requiring
explanation, in addition to the general mystery of
the world. The scholastic argument for the exis
tence of God has just the value of the principles of
contradiction and of efficient causation. The first
is a point of support; the second is a lever which
thought employs to lift the things which change to
the plane of the Being who changes not. Remove
the point of support or destroy the lever, and
thought falls impotent before the world's enigma.

God, adds Thomas Aquinas, having in Himself

216 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

no potentiality, is infinitude., absolute perfection;
and at this point his mind is suddenly lifted and
borne upwards, and it attains to the most penetrat
ing insight concerning divinity. In order to bring
this home to our full realization, I shall avail my
self of a simile, — although in such matters com
parison is inadequate.

Imagine a series of vessels, with different capa
cities, which are to be filled with water; let there be
tiny vessels, and vessels that will contain gallons,
and great receptacles which are to serve as reser
voirs. Clearly the volume of water, which may bt
stored in each vessel, must be limited by the capa
city of the vessel itself. Once a vessel is filled, not
a drop can be added to its content; were the very
ocean itself to flow over it, the contents of the ves
sel would not increase.

Now existence in a finite being may be likened to
the water, in our simile; for existence too is limited
by the capacity of every recipient being. This ca
pacity is the sum total of the potentialities which
from moment to moment become actual reali
ties, by being invested with existence. That oak
of the forest which is invested with the most beauti
ful qualities of its species, and with the most per
fect vital forces; that man of genius who is endowed
with the most precious gifts of mind and body,—
these possess the maximum of existence that can
possibly lie found in the species of oak and of man.
But, be it remembered, the capacity for existence

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 217

in each of these is limited and circumscribed by the
very fact of the apportioned potentiality, or "es
sence." In this beautiful conception of Thomas, a
vigorous oak has a larger measure of existence than
a stunted one; a man of genius possesses existence
in a larger sense than a man of inferior mind,—
because the great man and the vigorous oak posses^
a larger measure of powers and activities, and be
cause these powers and activities exist. But, once
more, there is a limit even to their existence.

On the other hand, to return to our simile, let us
picture to ourselves an existence indefinitely uncir-
cumscribed, say the ocean, without shore to confine
or to limit it. Such existence, pure and unqualified,
is that of God. God is existence; He is nothing but
the plenitude of existence; He is the one who is,—
Ego sum qui sum — whose very essence is His ex
istence. All other beings receive some degree of
existence, — the degree increasing in measure with
their increasing capacity. But they receive, in each
instance, this degree of existence from God. The
created agents, or secondary causes, determine the
capacity of the vessel, and the size varies unceas
ingly; God alone fills it to the full capacity of ex
istence.

It is God who is the direct dispenser of exis
tence, from that of pure spirits to that of atoms.
It is He who sustains everything, that is anything,
short of pure nothing. It is He who directs the
world toward the goal, which is known to Him

218

PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

alone; and presumptuous, nay rash, would it be
for men to seek to penetrate the mystery. In short,
God is existence ; other beings receive existence — an
existence distinct from His own — just in propor
tion as they have the power to receive it. No one
can say what Infinity implies. "The highest knowl
edge which we can have of God in this life," writes
Thomas Aquinas, "is to know that Pie is above all
that we can think concerning Him."6

Scholastic metaphysics thus finds its culmina
tions in theodicy. Starting out from the study of
the changing corporeal world, it rises to the Being
without whom change would be inexplicable. But
its main object is none the less a study of the cor
poreal beings which surround us. Hence one may
say that it is based on observation and anchored to
the very rock of reality.7

e De Veritate, q. II, art. 2.

7 The following schema may aid in clarifying the metaphysical
doctrines and the relations explained in this chapter:

Prime matter (materia prima)

Essence
(essentia)

Existence

(esse)

Substance
(nitbxtantia)

Accidents
(accident ia)

Substantial form (forma sub-
stantialis)

Qualities, for instance: shape,

power, habit (habitus)
Quantity
Action
Passion
Relation
Time
Space

Posture (se habere)
State

CHAPTER TEN

INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIAL, INDUSTRY

i. Social theory the last addition to scholastic philosophy,
ii. Fundamental principle: the group exists for its members,
and not conversely, iii. Ethical foundation of this principle,
iv. The idea of the group in the teaching of canonists and
jurists, v. Metaphysical basis: the group not an entity out
side of its members, vi. Comparison of the group with the
human body. vii. Conclusion.

SOCIAL philosophy is the last addition to the edifice
which the scholastic thinkers reared. In point
of fact, it is unhistorical to speak of a social phi
losophy before 1260, the year in which William
of Moerbeke's translation of the Politics of Aris
totle came into circulation among scholars. Prior
to that time we find, to be sure, discussions on iso
lated questions, such as natural law or the divine
origin and the moral function of political authority.
But these questions were not combined in any phil
osophical system, — although they received remark
able elaboration in the works of Manegold of Lau-
tenbach and of John of Salisbury especially (in his
Poly orations, 1159).

However, in saying that social philosophy is
one of the last additions to the scholastic edifice,

'220 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

some explanation is necessary, in order to make
valid this temporal comparison. A philosophy does
not grow as a house, to which a wing is added from
time to time, nor as a landed estate to which one
adds gradually adjoining fields. For, new doc
trines that are introduced in philosophy must not
destroy those which have been already adopted; on
the contrary, they must be suited to form with the
doctrines adopted a coherent whole, and to this end
each and every addition must be carefully re
thought.

The systematic character of scholastic social
philosophy is striking in the works of Thomas
Aquinas. He is the first to succeed in constructing,
out of the new material, a doctrine in which every
thing holds together, and which is entirely impreg
nated with the social mentality of the thirteenth
century. This doctrine appears in his Summa The-
ologica and in his commentary on the Politics of
Aristotle; we know that he also intended to write
a treatise DC He gimme Principum, for the educa
tion of a ruling prince, Hugh II of Lusignan, king
of Cyprus.1 Other philosophers followed his ex
ample and his teachings; they addressed their

i See Summa Theol, 1* 2"e, qq. XCIII-CV. Thomas himself com
mentated only Books I and II and III (part only chs. 1-6) of Aris
totle's Politics. This is now clear from an ancient MS cited by
Grabrnann (See "Welchen Tell der Aristotelischen Politik hat der
hi. Thomas selbst Kommentirt?" in Philos. Jahrbuch, 1915, pp.
373-5). As for the De Rcyimine Principum, only Book I and part
of Book II (chs. 1-4) were written by Thomas. The authenticity of

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 221

works to princes and kings, in order to enlighten
them regarding both their rights and their duties.
Thus, for instance, the Franciscan Gilbert of
Tournai wrote, at the request of Louis IX of
France, a treatise Eruditi-o Rcgum et Principum,
which has been recently published;2 and Grilles of
Home composed a similar work for the king's son.

As preliminary to a discussion of the more im
portant questions with which scholastic social
philosophy concerned itself- — a subject which we
reserve for the next chapter — I wish here to ex
amine its basic principle. This principle consti
tutes the broad foundation of political and so
cial theory, and upon it the superstructure of the
state was laid, very much as the stories of a house
are made to rest upon the main floor. The principle
may be briefly stated as follows: The State exists
for the good of the citizen, or obversely, it is not the
citizen ivlio is for the good of the state. This state
ment is susceptible of enlargement. Any group

even so much has been doubted by J. A. Endres ("De regiraine prin-
cipum <k\s hi. Thomas von Aquin," in Uaiimkcr's Beltrfiye, Fest
schrift, 1913, pp. 261-267). However, his reasoning is not at all con
clusive; and the oldest and best catalogues attribute this portion to
Thomas himself. It is my own opinion that Thomas was the author
of the beginning of the work (Bks. I and II, chs. 1-4), and that the
remainder was inspired by his doctrine.

2 A. De Poorter, — in the series: Les Philosophes Beiges, collection
de textes et d'ttudes, vol. IX, Louvain, 191'4.

222 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

whatever, — be it family, village, city, province,
kingdom, empire, abbey, parish church, bishopric,
or even the Catholic Church — justifies itself in the
good which it accomplishes for its members. In
other words, the members do not exist for the good
of the group. The question is the more interesting
because the professors of Roman law at Bologne
and the other jurists, who argued on behalf of the
sovereigns (the Hohenstaufen, and the kings of
England and France), and the canonists, follow
ing the Decretiim of Gratian, had touched upon
these delicate questions; but the philosophers at
tained to a clearness and precision which had been
denied to experts in law on the same questions.

In very fact, this principle — that the state exists
only for the good of the citizen, or obversely, that
it is not the citizen who exists for the good of the
state — is closely connected with the whole scholastic
system. While it is a foundation for the doctrine of
the state, this principle itself rests upon an ethical
ground. In its turn, this ethical ground rests upon
the deeper lying basis of metaphysical doctrine.
Thus, social philosophy in reality rests upon a
twofold basis, the ethical and the metaphysical.
Let us consider briefly the part played by each of
these bases.

Ill

First, the ethical foundations of the principle.
Why should the group, in particular the state, be

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 223

subordinated to the good of the citizens? Is not
the citizen an instrument for the good of the state?
Scholastic ethics replies: because every human be
ing has a certain sacred value, an inviolable indi
viduality, and as such he has a personal destiny, a
happiness, which the state must aid him to realize.
Let us see more fully what this means.

Each man seeks in his life to attain some end.
Our activities would lack even ordinary meaning, if
they did not reach forward to a goal, if they did
not aim — consciously or unconsciously — to realize
the good, that is to say the perfection of the indi
vidual who is the source of the activities involved.
This is true not only for man, but for all created
things. Human finality is simply an application of
universal finality; and therefore the scholastics re
peat with Aristotle: "That is good which each
thing seeks" (Bonum est quod omnia appetunt).
Man's possession of his good means human happi
ness.

As a matter of fact, men seek the good in the
most diverse objects, and they frequently deceive
themselves; but that is only a question of applica
tion, which does not affect the main thesis. Even
the man who hangs himself is yielding to inclina
tions which he believes will issue in his benefit. But
this illustration only shows that one should pursue
one's good according to rational judgements, and
follow where they lead him, without letting himself
be deceived by appearances. Man, indeed, is dis-

224 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

tinguished from the stone which falls, or from the
wild beast which follows its instincts, by the fact
that he has the privilege of reflecting on his ways
and choosing them freely; he has the power of mis
taken choice. Man's counsels lie in his own hands.
The philosophers of the thirteenth century have no
difficulty in proving, that neither riches nor honour,
nor glory, nor power, nor sensual indulgence can
satisfy the demands of the good, the summum bo-
num for men; there he is free to seek or not to
seek them as the chief end of life.3

Moreover, every destiny is necessarily personal;
the good is my good. If, for example, I make it
to consist in pleasure, it is quite evident that the
pleasure is my pleasure. A fortiori must destiny
be personal for the scholastic ethics which maintains
that happiness results from the employment of that
which is the noblest and the highest in human life,—
namely, knowledge and love. Nothing is more per
sonal than knowing and loving. Happiness is so
personal a matter, that the good of another only
enters into it incidentally, and not essentially. Jt
takes a noble soul to include the destinies of others
within the domain of his own preoccupations.

Now, the individual left quite to himself, as a
solitary being, is not sufficient to attain to his propei
end. He will find himself deprived of material
means, of intellectual directions, of moral support.
This impotence of the solitary individual, says

3 See above, p. 186.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 225

Thomas Aquinas, is the sole reason for the ex
istence of society. "Man is called by nature," he
writes,4 "to live in society; for he needs many things
which are necessary to his life, and which by him
self he cannot procure for himself. Whence it fol
lows that man naturally becomes part of a group
(pars multitudinis) , to procure him the means of
living well. lie needs this assistance for two rea
sons. First, in order that he may obtain the ele
mentary necessities of life; this he does in the do
mestic circle of which he is a part. Every man re
ceives from his parents life and nourishment and
education; and the reciprocal aid of the family
members facilitates the mutual provision of the ne
cessities of life. But there is a second reason why
the individual is helped by the group, of which he
is a part, and in which alone he finds his adequate
well being. And this is, that he may not only live
but live the good life, — which is enabled by the op
portunities of social intercourse. Thus civil society
aids the individual in obtaining the material neces
sities, by uniting in the same city a great number
of crafts, which could not be so united in the same
family. And civil society also assists him in the
moral life."

The scholastic philosophers of the thirteenth cen
tury unanimously agree with Aristotle and Augus
tine that it is a natural necessity for man to live in
society, naturalis necessitas. This social life in-

* Comment in Ethic. Nicom., lib. I.

226 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

volves degrees. There are groups, more or less ex
tensive, which are logically and chronologically an
terior to the state. Man is of necessity born into a
family (domus). Several families grouped under
a chief constitute a village — community, vicus,
whose raison d'etre, says Dante,5 is to facilitate an
exchange of services between men and things. The
city (civitas), continues Dante, is a wider organi
zation, which allows one to live with moral and ma
terial sufficiency, bene sufficienterque vivere. But,
whereas Aristotle had stopped with the city,
Thomas considers (in the De Regimine Principum)
a wider group, the province, — which corresponds to
Dante's kingdom (regnum). Perhaps we may see
in the province those large feudal fiefs, which were
important units, such as the Duchy of Normandy
or the Duchy of Brabant, with which Thomas was
actually acquainted. As regards states, some were
growing up under his very eyes, notably in Italy,
where the princes of the house of Anjou were gov
erning the Two Sicilies, while the main European
states, France, England, Spain, and Germany were
taking on their various characteristic features. A
kingdom (regnum particular e) > writes Dante, pro
vides the same advantages as the city, but gives a
greater feeling of security, cum majori fiducia suae
tranqmllitatis. In this Dante repeats the thomistic

•• De M on fir cliia, lib. I.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 227

thought that the kingdom, better than the city, re
sponds to the needs of war, when it is attacked by
enemies.6

Now, since the group exists only for the benefit
of its individuals, the good of the group will not be
of any other kind than that of the individuals.
Thus Thomas says: "The end of the group is
necessarily the end of each individual who com
poses the group," — oportet eundem fincm esse mul-
titudinis humanae qui est hominis unius.1 And
Dante, in a similar vein, writes: "Citizens are not
for consuls or kings, but kings and consuls are for
citizens," — non enim cives propter consules nee
gens propter regent,, sed e converso.8 The group
would be an absurdity, if the roles were reversed,
and the state or any other group should pursue a
course, which no longer coincided with the happi
ness of each of its subjects; and if the individual be
treated as a worn-out machine, which one scraps
when it has become useless.

This conception is at once new and mediaeval.
For, while the city or the state appears in Aristotle
as an end in itself, to which the individuals are sub
ordinated, the scholastic philosophy, on the con
trary, conceived of the states as subordinated to the
good of the individuals. For Aristotle the prime
duty is to be a good citizen,, and to increase one's

o De Regimine Principum, lib. I, cap. 1. De Monarchia, lib. I.
7 De Regimine Principum, lib. I, cap. 14.
s De Monarchia, lib. I.

228 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

civic virtue. But for the scholastic philosopher the
prime duty is to give to life a human value, to be a
good man, and the state should help each of its
members to become such.

It follows from this teaching that as against the
state the individual should hold himself erect, con
scious of his crown of rights, which the state can
not infringe upon, because their validity is derived
from the worth of personality itself. These are
''the rights of man." Their foundation is the law
of nature, that is to say, the essence of man and the
eternal law, — the eternal relations which regulate
the order of beings in conformity with the decrees
of uncreated wisdom. These are the right to pre
serve his life, the right to marry and to rear chil
dren, the right to develop his intellect, the right to
be instructed, the right to truth, the right to live in
society. These are some of the prerogatives of the
individual which appear in the thirteenth century
declaration of the rights of man.9

Thus, scholastic philosophy justifies from an
ethical point of view the conception of the worth of
the individual, as against the central power. But
we see at once how it also conforms to the feudal
temperament. For, knight and baron and vassal
and citizen had all been consumed for two centu
ries past with the idea of living each his own life.

o Thomas Aquinas, Snmma TheoJ.. Ia2ae, q. XCIV, art. 2.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 229

But, in its turn, the ethical doctrine rests upon a
metaphysical foundation. Why, indeed, does the
human person possess the right to realize his happi
ness, of which no state can deprive him? Meta
physics replies: because human personality alone
is a genuine substantial reality. On the other
hand, any group whatever, the state included, is
not a real being ; it is simply a group of human per
sons (multitude hominum) .

This doctrine interested the jurists and the can
onists as much as it did the philosophers. Since its
nature is such as to throw light upon the political
mentality of the period, let us consider briefly the
conceptions of the jurists and theorists in civil and
canon law. This will be a helpful preliminary to
dispose of, before passing to the conclusions of the
philosophers.

The legalistic theorists simply took over from
Roman law the concept of the corporation (uni-
versitas) and applied it, — as civil theorists to the
state, and as canonists to the Church. Now, the
Roman corporation (universitas) is nothing but an
association of individuals. To be sure, it is the
seat of private rights, and it can possess and acquire
property; but, as Savigny has emphasized, it is not
a real person, and in consequence it has no soul, no
intelligence, no will. The Roman jurists were too
realistic, too amenable to common sense logic, to
conceive of a collective soul, — a reality distinct

PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

from the individuals — in these associations, whose
purposes were plainly commercial and industrial.

Similarly, the parish churches and the monasteries
and the universal Church had not been regarded by
the canonists as real entities, as beings distinct from
the members who compose them. Innocent IV,
who had the name of being an eminent jurist, is the
first who would have spoken of the corporation as
a "persona ficta' a fictitious person — an excellent
formula, which is not found in the Digest of Jus
tinian, but which expresses admirably the thought
of the thirteenth century. Gierke calls him the
"father of the fictitious person theory."1 There
after the corporation is definitely no thing-in-itself,
no living organism, in the real sense of the word,
since it has neither intelligence nor will. The can
onists, indeed, declare that it cannot commit crime
or misdemeanour of any kind; hence a political
group as such need not fear hell or wrath to come.

Nor do the mediaeval lawyers conceive otherwise
of the state-corporation. In the same manner they
explain the artificial personality of the kingdom or
of the empire. The state (universitas) is the col
lective mass of individual men, who constitute the
populus; and its functions, — says the author of a
treatise DC Aequitate which is ascribed to Irnerius,

10 Otto von Gicrke, Die Ft (tat it- und Kurporationslehre (lex ^liter-
turns und des Mittelalters und Hire Aufnahme in Deutschland, Ber
lin, 1881, p. 279, n. 102: "cum collegium in causa universitatis finga-
tur una persona" (Innocent IV).

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 231

—is to care for the individual men who are its
members.11 Likewise, the society of states is con
sidered by Dante as a grouping of individuals, a
respublica humana rather than as a group of gov
ernments. The universal monarch is the servant of
all, minister omnium, precisely as the Pope is the
servant of the servants of God. He wills the wel
fare of each man; he is nearer to each citizen than
is any particular sovereign.12 And in the four
teenth century Baldus writes: "Imperium non
habet ammum, ergo non habet velle nee nolle quia
animi sunt/J13

Does this conception of the state (as being no
entity outside of the members who constitute it)
really represent a failure14 of the mediaeval jurists
and canonists? Is it not rather the triumph of
good sense and healthy thinking of men who were
seeking loyally for truth and not for originality?
Personally I do not believe that the state is a real
being, a real substance outside of its citizens, and
I agree with Paul Bourget in one of his latest novels
(Le Sens de la Mort) , when he places in the mouth

11 Irnerius, De Aequitate, 2: universitas, id est populus, hoc habet
officium, singulis scilicet hominibus quasi membris providere. Cf.
Carlyle, op. cit., vol. II, p. 57.

12 De Monarchia, I. Cf. above, ch. V, 111.

is Cited by Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Ages, (English
translation by Maitland), Cambridge, 1900, p. 70. This translation is
only a small part of Gierke's work cited above.

n Gierke, Ibid.

232 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

of Doctor Marsal these suggestive words: "To die
for France is not to die for a collective entity, but
for all Frenchmen present and to come. To climb
the ladder and go over the top, is to mount the
scaffold. They did it. For whom? For France.
But France is the sum total of all those who are
destined to be Frenchmen. It is our very selves,
you and I, — we Frenchmen, I repeat."1

The underlying reason for this doctrine, — that
the state large or small is not a "thing-in-itself," an
entity distinct from the citizens who compose it — is
furnished by the scholastic philosophy itself, and
we have already seen what it is. For scholastic
philosophy the world is pluralistic, the only real
beings existing are individual beings, — for instance,
such and such oak, such and such bee, such and such
man.10 And since unity follows being (ens et unum
convertuntur) , individuals alone have a physical
and internal unity. A forest of oaks, a hive of
bees, a team of horses, a steamboat, a house, an
army, a parish, a city, a state, — none of these desig
nate real, physical beings ; in consequence they have
not the unity that belongs to a real substance.

13 Sortir cle la tranchdo, sur I'c'chelle, c'cst monter a. lYvlwfaud.
Us y montent. Pour qui? Pour la France. Mais la France, c'est
la somme clos destinies francaises. C'est nous, je vnus repete.
p. 173, edit. 1915, Paris, Plon.

i'J See ch. IX, ii.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 233

In what then does this unity of the group con
sist? The metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas give
us light on this subtle question. After having
shown why the individual must become a member
of a family and of a civic community, he writes:
"Now we ought to know that this totality, of the
civil or the domestic group, possesses only the unity
of (external) order, and consequently it is not en
dowed with the unity that belongs to a natural sub
stance. This is the reason why a portion of this
totality can carry on activities which are not the
act of the group. A soldier, for example, carries
out actions which do not belong to the arm.}7; but
such actions of the soldier do not prevent the group
from carrying on its activities, — activities which
do not belong to each part but to the whole. Thus,
a battle is the activity of the whole army; the tow
ing of a barge is the activity of the totality of the
men who pull on the rope."17

There is then a profound difference between the

i? "Sciendum est autem quod hoc totum, quod est civilis multitudo
vel domesticia familia, habet solam unitatem ordinis, secundum quam
non est aliquid simpliciter unum. Et ideo pars ejus totius potest
habere operationem quae non est operatic totius, sicut miles in exer-
citu habet operationem quae non est totius exercitus. Habet nibil-
ominus et ipsum totum aliquam operationem, quae non est propria
alicujus partium, puta conflictus totius exercitus. Et tractus navis
est operatic multitudo trahentium navem." In Ethic. Nicom., L. I.
I understand "unitas ordinis" to mean the unity resulting from a
combination of independent beings, realizing an external order, as dis
tinguished from the physical unity which results from internal order,
in a being where there is a plurality of elements.

234 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

unity of the individual, — the organic and internal
"indivi&ion" (unum simpliciter) which belongs to
the human person — and the external unity which
is the outcome of social grouping among a certain
number of individuals. Internal unity introduces
coherence within the individual substance, so that
all of its constituent parts or elements have neither
independent value nor existence of their own.
Hence there is a contradiction in the very idea of a
collective- per son. Either the members who are
supposed to compose such a collective person, re
main substantially independent, — in which case
there is no one person but a collection of persons—
or they are dependent of the whole, and then each
member loses his individuality. It is quite different
in the case of the external unity that appears in a
group of persons, since this unity does not affect
the individuality that belongs to each member.

You will ask then: Is the family or the state a
mere nothing? To make such an assertion would
be to overstate the doctrine. For, the unity of the
group, of which Thomas speaks, is functional in
character and rests on performing in common cer
tain human activities,, of which each member con
tributes his share. Such activities are endowed with
reality, but a reality different from the incommuni
cable and inalienable substantial being which each
member preserves. In towing a barge, the muscu
lar activities of the men who tow are directed in
common ; in a game or a club or any friendly asso-

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 235

elation, each member plaees a portion of his activi
ties at the disposal of the common life, — and in all
of these cases withdrawal is always possible.

But in the family or the community, on the con
trary, this mutual pooling of activities is imposed
by nature; there can be no such withdrawal, for
certain basic activities of the individual are ab
sorbed by the community. Indeed, in certain crises,
for the common good and the common safety, the
family or the state can demand the entire activity
of its members. But even so, the man who gives all
his activities nevertheless preserves his individual
ity. The individual man never surrenders the
sovereignty of his own personality.

This doctrine could not have been stated more
clearly than it was by Thomas Aquinas in these
fine words: "The law should take account of many
things as to persons, as to affairs, and as to times.
For, the community of the state is composed of
many persons, and its good is procured by varied
activities"™

Accordingly, from the point of view of scholastic
metaphysics, there is no difference between the
unity of a group of men towing a barge and the
unity of the family or of the state or even of a whole

is Bonum autem commune constat ex multis, et ideo oportet quod
lex ad multa respiciat et secundum personas et secundum negotia
et secundum tempora. Constituitur enim communitas civitatis ex
multis personis et ejus bonum per multiples actiones procuratur.
Summa Theol, 1*2*0, q. XCVI, art. 1.

236 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

civilization. The only question of difference is that
which attaches to the excellence of the activities
displayed. The proper functioning of the state de
pends upon the diversity of activities, and a state
hecomes more perfect, as does a whole civilization,
in proportion as these activities are more com
plete, more varied, and more intense. The bonum
commune,, the commonwealth which the state has
to provide, results from the sum total of activities
performed to unite and to harmonize.

These considerations make clear how one can
speak at the same time of the unity of the civiliza
tion of the thirteenth century and of the pluralism
which is so hasic in their thought. The unity of a
civilization is the result of common aspirations,
common beliefs, common sentiments both moral
and artistic, common language, common organiza
tion of life; and such a unity is no more than a com
munity of activities. At the same time, unity of
substance, or physical unity, belongs to each of the
numerous personalities which are the agents of this
civilization, and to them only.19

10 Through failure to perceive this distinction between the unity
of order and the physical unity, many historians deny individualism
in the Middle Ages, and misconceive that fundamental teaching of
thirteenth-century metaphysics, — "nilii! ext praetcr iiidirirftium.''
Thus, struck by the unitary character of the civilization, Mr. E. Bar
ker writes: "We can hardly say that the Middle Ages have any con
ception of the state. The notion of the state involves plurality, but
plurality is e.v hypothesi not to be found." See, "Unity in the
Middle Ages," in The Unity of Western Civilization, p. 112, ed.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 237

In this thomistic and scholastic view, the group
life acquires dynamic meaning. It rests upon a
sharing of activities for the good of all. Possessing
all a similar human nature, with its train of inalien-
ahle rights, the individuals present the greatest di
versity in their talents, their faculties, and the ac
tivities which result from them. Equal in human
nature,, men are unequal in capacity for action;20
such is the metaphysical law which governs the
play of the social group, in all of its degrees.

After this precise and suhstantial argument, to
which the whole hody of scholastic philosophers of
the thirteenth century subscribe, it is easy to give
just value to a certain favourite comparison of that
age, — a comparison to which publicists, canonists,
legalists, theologians, and even poets, frequently
recur, for the purpose of explaining the problem
of the individual in relation to the group. It is
the comparison of the state with the human body.
John of Salisbury works out the comparison in de
tail, and he likens each member of the human body

Marvin, Oxford, 1915. This statement is preceded by this other
erroneous assertion: "The prevalence of Realism, which marks
mediaeval metaphysics down to the end of the thirteenth century,
is another Platonic inheritance, and another impulse to unity. The
universal is and is a veritable thing in which the particular shares
and acquires its substance by its degree of sharing." Nothing is
more contrary to scholastic philosophy of the thirteenth century.
20 Cf. ch. IX, iv and vii.

238 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

to some part of the state. The prince is the head;
the senate is the heart; officers and judges are the
eyes, ears, and tongue; officials are the hands; the
peasants arid the workers are the feet of the state,—
so that, remarks this English writer, the state has
more feet than a centipede or a scolopendra. The
function of protecting the people becomes the
"footwear" of the state. Indeed, there is no reason
why one might not continue this little game of
anthropomorphic comparison without end.21

The idea is no discovery of John of Salisbury's.
He himself refers it to a letter written by Plutarch
to Trajan (falsely so far as we yet know). The
comparison is repeated in the thirteenth century,
but it has lost its literal value. Each state, each
church, each city, even each guild, is compared to
a natural body. But the philosophers of that cen
tury are not misled by its purely figurative value,
and Engelbert of Volkersdorf, abbot of Admont,
who writes about 1290 a treatise concerning the
rule of Princes, speaks of a moral and political
body, in contrast with the body of nature.22 Fur
ther, when Thomas Aquinas calls the collectivity
of the citizens a public person, persona piiblica,zz
there is no doubt possible abeut his true meaning.

Reduced to the role of an imaginative instru
ment, the comparison is not wanting in elegance;

21 Polycraticus, lib. V, cap. 1 and 2.

22 Gierke, op. cit., p. 24.

23 Summa Theol. lagae, q. XC, art. 3.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 239

it shows in a striking way that, in a political or ec
clesiastical organism, the members do not occupy
the same place; that there are diversities of func
tions; that there are intermediate articulations;
that a healthy organ can help or supply a weak or
defective organ. The comparison is well suited to
the mediaeval mind with its delight in symbols, and
to an age which speaks of the mystical marriage of
Christ with the Church and of the bishop with his
diocesan church, and which likens to daughters the
various abbeys which have grown out of the mother
abbey. Such symbols, and many more, deceived
no one. Nor do we today take literally Tennyson's
comparison of "the million-footed mob,"24 or the
expression "adopted towns," which was given to
certain cities crushed during the war, or "mother-
towns" as the name proudly assumed by certain
other cities which undertook the adoption. The
philosophers of the thirteenth century did not mis
take the straw of words for the grain of ideas. The
organic theory, made fashionable today by certain
German philosophers is contrary to the genius of
scholastic philosophy, as it is opposed to the juri
dical doctrine of the thirteenth century ; both would
have regarded it as a seductive mirage.

VII

A short time before the war, I made a brief stay
at Strasbourg. In visiting its magnificent cathe-

24 The Fleet.

240 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

dral, I observed that a crack had appeared in one
of the walls of the finished tower, and that it had
been necessary to erect a support, in order to pre
vent the tower from collapsing. A friend ex
plained to me that the architects of the thirteenth
century had erected the cathedral on a foundation
of strong oak piles, which had lasted for centuries
because they were driven into marshy ground, but
that the recent drainage works in the city had
brought about the unforeseen consequence of drying
out these ancient water-soaked timbers, and so un
dermining the cathedral. Invisible arid under
ground, up to that time they had sustained the
facade of this marvelous Gothic gem, without any
one realizing how fundamental was their presence
and their function.

So it is with the metaphysical doctrine, which
may be called the invisible and underlying support
of the social philosophy of the thirteenth century.
Upon this foundation reposed morals, as upon mor
als is based the guiding principle that the state is
made for the citizens, the group for its members.
If the metaphysics of the scholastics should settle
or fall, then in turn their ethics would be compro
mised, and an ominous cleft would appear in their
social philosophy. This close interdependence of
doctrines furnishes a striking example of the co
herence and unity of the scholastic system, which
we have above pointed out.""

25 See ch. V, i.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE THEORY OF THE STATE

i. Sovereignty from God. ii. It is a function; morality of
governors not different from that of the governed; what the
function implies, iii. Sovereignty resides in the people who
delegate it. iv. The best form of government according to
the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, v. Making of laws the
essential attribute of sovereignty ; natural law and human
law. vi. This form of government compared with the Euro
pean states of the thirteenth century; with the modern nation
alities ; with the theories of preceding centuries.

THE state exists for the good of the individuals,
and not conversely. It is in the light of this prin
ciple that all the problems, which the study of state
organization raises, are solved; and, as thinkers are
agreed on the principle, so they will he agreed also
upon the majority of solutions which issue from it,
by way of application or of corollary. These prob
lems can all be arranged under some aspect of the
notion of sovereignty or power. No social life is
possible, — whether in the family, the village com
munity, the state, the monastery, the parish, the
diocese, the universal Church — unless there exists
an authority to which the members owe obedience.

242 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

What then is the source of sovereignty, in what
does it consist, to whom does it belong, what are its
attributes ? These are some of the specific problems
in the philosophical discussion of political life.

Whence comes sovereignty, this superiority of
one man, who rules over his fellow men? Like their
predecessors of the preceding centuries, the thir
teenth-century philosophers answer: All power
comes from God. And their reasoning is as fol
lows. The entire universe is under a providential
plan; it is governed by an eternal law (lex
aeterna], which is nothing but the order of things,
the sum of relations which result from the nature
of beings.1 To realize his end as a rational being,
and to attain to his happiness, is man's unique part
in cooperating with the universal cosmic finality,
ordained by God. Now, the rationale of governing
others, ratio gubernationis,, is instituted to make
easy for each person the realization of his end. It
must therefore be, in the final analysis, a divine
delegation, a command according to which the rul
ers carry out those necessary functions which will
enable the individual members to occupy their as
signed places in the divine economy.2

Accordingly, rulers hold divine power by dele-

1 See below, v of this chapter.

2 "Cum ergo lex aeterna sit ratio gubernationis in supremo guber-
nante, necesse est quod omnes rationes gubernationis quae sunt in
inferioribus gubernantibus a lege aeterna deriventur." Thomas
Aquinas, Siimma Theol., Ia2ae, q XCIII, a. 3.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 243

gation. This theory is independent of the further
question: In what way does this power, divine in
its essence, come to those who hold it, and to whom
is it given? Let the rulers hold this power from
God directly, as the legalists and the De Monarchist
teach, or let the delegation of temporal power pass
through the Papal channel, as the partisans of
mediate divine power maintain; let sovereignty be
in the hands of a monarch or a representative re
public, — in any case, it always derives back to God
as its source. The demands of metaphysics link it
up with God.

The raison d'etre of sovereignty therefore fixes
its nature. And this brings us to our second ques
tion: In what does sovereignty consist? Legal
ists and canonists and philosophers all agree in the
reply. Sovereignty is a utility, a function, an of-
ficium; it is dedicated to the well-being of all. The
applications of the leading principle, already ex
plained, are easy to understand. Since the state is
made for the individual, sovereignty in the state can
be only an advantage for its members. Princes of
the earth, according to Thomas Aquinas, are insti
tuted by God, not for their own advantage, but in
order that they may serve the common good.8 The
kingdom, says Ptolemy of Lucques, is not made

3 De Regimine Principum, I, c. 1-3.

244 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

for the king, but the king for the kingdom.4 Even
under the theocratic papal rule, the idea persisted
of an offidum, duty, fused with that of power.
The Pope is the servant of the servants of God,
scrvus servorum Dei. It is just because the state
is an association of individuals, and instituted for
their welfare, that there is no difference between
the morality of the governors and that of the gov
erned. For instance, fidelity to treaties and obser
vance of the precepts of loyalty are required; they
constitute the very foundation of the jus gentium.
Or, again, war of conquest is forbidden, because it
prevents the state from watching over the welfare
of individuals.

But how will the government fulfill its function?
How will it aid the individual to attain his end,—
which is above all a certain moral happiness, re
sulting from the facultas contemplandi veritatem?5
The answer is this: By realizing the unit as multi-
tudinis, a unity which is accidental and external,
by realizing a bonam commune, which results from
the harmonious and convergent activities expended
by the citizen, — activities which the DC Regimine
is so careful to distinguish from the unitas hominis
of each individual.6

4 Regnum non propter regem, sed rex propter regnum. De Regi
mine Principum, III, c. 11.

5 See Thomas Aquinas, Comment in Ethic. Nicom., X, 11.

s Ipsa tamen hominis unitas per naturam causatur; multitudinis
autem unitas quae pax dicitur, per regentis industriam est pro-
curanda. De Regimine Principum, lib. I, cap. 15.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 245

Government is charged with a threefold partici
pation in the affairs of our common life.7 First, it
must establish (instituere) the common weal by
guarding the peace within its bounds, sometimes
referred to as convenientia voluntatum* by inciting
the citizens to lead a moral life, and by providing
for a sufficient abundance (suffidens copia) of the
necessities of life. The public weal once estab
lished, the next duty is to conserve it. This is ac
complished by assuring a recruitment of the agents
of administration; by repressing disorder; by en
couraging morality through a system of rewards
and punishments; and by protecting the state
against the attacks of enemies from without. Fi
nally, the government is charged with a third mis
sion, more vague, more elastic; to improve (ut sit
de promotione solicitus), to rectify abuses, to make
up for defects, to work for progress.

The bonum commune to be established and main
tained by the government is based upon a splendid
conception of solidarity: every good and virtuous
act performed by the individual man is capable of
benefitting the community, — the community in
which he has membership, as a part of the whole.
Hence it follows that, in the state, the individual
good can be referred always to the common wel
fare : the scholar who studies and teaches, the monk
who prays and preaches, these render service to the

7 De Regimine Principum, lib. I, cap. 15.

8 Thomas Aquinas, In Ethic. Nicom., Ill, 8.

246 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

community as much as do the artisan and the
farmer and the common laborer. Thomas Aquinas
expressly teaches that every virtuous action (in the
realm of nature or of grace) can enter into the con
stitution of general or legal justice (justitia gcner-
alis vel leg alls] ; for virtue here adjusts, with an
eye to the common welfare, the relations of order
maintaining in the conduct of the various members
of the community.8"

This conception assumes special significance, — a
significance characteristic of the social order in the
thirteenth century — when one reflects upon the
Prince as charged with making effectual this virtue
in the justitia leg alls. It is he who possesses the
virtue of justice by right of headship (architect-
oiricc] , and in an eminent manner, whereas his
subordinate possesses it only in administrative de-

8" See Summa Theol., 2a2ao, q. LVIII, art. 5, for the important
text in this connection. "Manifestum est autem quod omnes qui sub
communitate aliqua continentur, comparantur ad communitatem
sicut partes ad totuni; pars autem id quod cst, totitis est; unde et
quodlibet lionuni partis est ordinabile in bonum totius. Secundum
hoc ergo bonum cujuslibet virtutis, sive ordinantis aliquem hominem
ad seipsum, sive ordinantis ipsum ad aliquas alias personas singu-
lares, est referibile ad bonum commune, ad quod ordinat justitia.
Et secundum hoc actus omnium virtutum possunt ad justitiam perti-
nere, secundum quod ordinant hominem ad bonum commune. Et
quantum ad hoc justitia dicitur virtus generalis. Et quia ad legem
pertinct ordinare ad bonum commune, . . . inde est quod talis
justitia praedicto modo generalis dicitur justitia legalis, quia scilicet
per earn homo concordat legi ordinanti actus omnium virtutum in
bonum commune."

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 247

pendence and secondarily.8" The Prince is custos
justi, the guardian of what is just; he is justum ani-
matum, the personification of what is just.80 He is
the peace-maker of society. By virtue of this title
he is qualified to direct the activities of his subordi
nates, to bid men to pray or to battle or to build or
to farm, — always for the greatest common good.8d

If, nevertheless, he who governs fails to be in
spired with this sense of the public good and aban
dons himself to a selfish and capricious use of
power, then he must be regarded as a tyrant.

Every treatise, written for the use of princes and
future kings, exhibits a dread of the tyrant who
allows his own personal advantage to override the
good of the group. Dante reserves a special place
in his hell for tyrants, by the side of brigands and
assassins.

Each establishes an entire system of guarantees
to preserve the state against tyranny, which is so
opposed to its nature. Some of these guarantees
are preventive. Thus, Thomas in the De llegi-
mine Principum, would have the people, — for the

s" Ibid., art. 6. "Et sic est (justitia legalis) in principe prin-
cipuliter et quasi architectonioe; in subditis autem secundario et
quasi administrative."

8° Ibid., art. 1, ad quintum.

8rt The same principle was invoked by ecclesiastical authority in
laying upon the Prince the duty of suppressing heresy. The bonum
commune, as it was understood in the thirteenth century, required
that man's end in the divine economy should be safeguarded and
that therefore the Prince should rigorously check any error which
might lead astray the members of the community.

248 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

thirteenth century, be it remembered, maintains the
thesis of the sovereign people — at the moment of
the choice of their rulers, inquire into their char
acter, and find out whether they have a despotic
temperament. "Look out for your king," he says
(providendum de rege)* Some of these guaran
tees are intended to last throughout the period of
their rule; for his power must be controlled and
balanced by others, — wheels within wheels, as we
shall show later. Finally, some of these guarantees
are repressive. Resistance is not only permitted
to unjust orders of the tyrant, but it is enjoined;
and in extreme cases the people who have chosen
can depose. While John of Salisbury considers
tyrannicide as licitum,, aequum and justum™
Thomas Aquinas expressly condemns tyrannicide.
He desires that that people should do their best to
endure an unjust ruler; but if the government be
comes quite unendurable, he allows the right of de
posing an unworthy ruler, which indeed is the nec
essary corollary of the power of choosing him.11

While it is clear that the philosophers of the
thirteenth century were keenly sensitive to the pic
tures of tyrants, which they found in the Politics
of Aristotle, it is no less clear that the public life
of their own age afforded them actual illustrations
of tyranny, which helped to provide an inspiration

9T.it). T, cap. C>. (If. his Comment Polit. lib. Ill, lectio 14.

10 Poll/mil irii.t, ITT, 15.

11 De Reglmine Princ., lib. I, cap. 6.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 249

for their theory. Ptolemy of Lucques, who com
pleted the De Regimine Principium hegun by
Thomas, poured contempt on the tyrants of the
minor Italian republics of his day (liodie in Italia] ,
who exploited the state for their own personal bene
fit. Perhaps he had in mind the Podestas, who
were called from abroad to carry on the administra
tion of the Italian republics, and who, once they
had secured the position, thought only of advanc
ing their own interests. Thomas Aquinas must
surely have known cases of feudal tyrants, sover
eigns who abused their power. The thirteenth cen
tury witnessed more than one royal deposition. It
suffices to recall how the barons of John Lackland
declared against him.

Ill

But their doctrine is self-consistent, no matter
who is entrusted with authority. And this brings
us to the third question, which is the most interest
ing of all. Where does sovereignty reside, — this
sovereignty which has its origin in divine delega
tion and its raison d'etre, its delimitation, in the so
cial good?

While the jurists and canonists are occupied only
with the Roman Empire, the existing monarchies,
and the Papacy,12 the philosophers take a more
general view. The most striking is Thomas Aqui-

12 Of. Gierke, op. cit. (Maitland's transl.), pp. 30 and 70, — notes
131 ajid 174.

2.50 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

nas, who gave to the droit social of the thirteenth
century a remarkable consistency, — which he im
posed on his contemporaries and his successors. It
was Thomas who also influenced his friend, Wil
liam of Moerbeke, to translate into Latin the Poli
tics of Aristotle.

To understand the political system of Thomas,
we must distinguish two distinct aspects of the
problem. On the one hand, in any state, — what
ever its degree of perfection — there is the question
of the seat of sovereignty. On the other hand,
there is the question of this same sovereignty in
the state which he believes to be the most perfect.

As regards the first question. In any state
sovereignty arises from collectivity and belongs to
all the people, that is to say, to the masses made
up of individuals. Since it is the people who con
stitute the state, and it is for the good of all the
citizens that sovereignty should be exercised, it is
logical to conclude that God has entrusted to the
collectivity itself the power of ruling and legislat
ing. Thus the doctrine of the "sovereignty of the
people" is not a modern discovery at all; it is in di
rect harmony with the leading idea of the scholas
tic political philosophy, that individuals are the only
social realities, and that therefore, the state is not
an entity outside of them. By a new link, then, this
doctrine binds the droit social to metaphysics and
ethics.

But the bodv of citizens is too numerous, too un-

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 251

formed, too fickle, to exercise by itself the power
which has been assigned to it by divine decree. Ac
cordingly, it in turn, delegates this power. Usu
ally they commit it to a monarch; but not neces
sarily, — for the people may also delegate it to an
aristocratic or to a republican form of government.
If the people delegate it to a monarch — and that
is the common mediaeval illustration — he repre
sents the group and holds power for the group;
or dinar e autem aliqitid in bonum commune est vel
totius multitudinis, vcl alicujus gerentis vicem to-
tius multitudinis™

The monarch, therefore, is only a vice-regent.
This is so literally true that (as we have already
seen in the De Regimine Principum) precautions
were usually recommended, when a vice-regent was
to be selected. Indeed, as Thomas says,14 "among
a free people who can make laws for themselves,
the consent given popularly to certain practices,
constantly made clear by custom, has more weight
than the authority of the prince ; for the latter holds
the power of legislating only so far as he represents
the will of the people." So, the power is transmit
ted, by this successive delegation from God to the
people and from the people to the monarch. It is
the entire collectivity which is the original subject
of the power. The people possess it by a certain
natural title, which nothing can destroy; but the

TheoL, Ia2ae, q. XC, art. 3.
i* Ibid., q. XCVII, art. 3, ad tertium.

252 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

king holds it subject to the will of the people, which
of course may change.

There is, then, at the source of the delegation
made by the people to the king, a contract; in the
less developed states this is a rudimentary or im
plicit will, but in states which have arrived at a
high degree of organization the will is explicit.
This will can give expression to itself, in a thousand
different ways, each one of them sufficient to render
legitimate the holding of power.

This mediaeval principle of the acquisition of
power by contract is in admirable agreement with
the metaphysical doctrine that the individual alone
is a real substance. Since the state is not an en
tity, the will of a state is nothing but the result of
the will of all its members; and the state cannot
exist without the mutual trust of the members and
those who are appointed to direct them. Again the
principle is in admirable agreement with feudal so
ciety and feudal monarchy, which rests entirely
upon the pact, pactum; upon the oath of fealty
which is the religious guarantee of fidelity to the
given wrord. Are not the pacts between kings and
burgesses, barons and prelates, foundation princi
ples of the institutions which envelop and assist in
constructing the feudal monarchy? When one of
the contracting parties breaks his agreement, the
other at once withdraws his part in the bargain and
resists. The history of the relations between the

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 253

kings and their feudatories and towns is full of in
stances of such resistance.

In principle, — as we have said, the delegation of
sovereignty by the people is of the same nature,
whether it he made to a monarch, or to an aristoc
racy, or to a republic. In a monarchy, there is the
advantage that the power is concentrated; and, as
Thomas points out, the absence of diffusion is more
efficacious (for both good and evil purposes) : Vir
tus unitiva magis est efficax quam dispersa et di-
visa.15 But, he goes on to say, circumstances them
selves must decide, at any given moment in the po
litical life of a people, which is the best form of
government; and this supplementary statement
gives to his theory that elasticity which renders it
adaptable to any set of conditions.

Thomas himself, however, shows very marked
preference for a composite form of government,
which he considers the most perfect realization of
this popular delegation, — and we have already con
sidered that form in general. This mixed system
is that in which the sovereignty belongs to the peo
ple, but at the same time it is combined with both
an elective monarchy and also an oligarchy to cur
tail the exercise of power by the monarch. The
general plan of his system is outlined from this
classic text: "Whereas these (that is, the various

is De Regimine Principum, lib. I, cap. 3.

254 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

forms of government) differ in kind . . . neverthe
less the first place is held by the 'kingdom,' where
the power of government is vested in one, an 'aris
tocracy,' which signifies government by the best,
where the power of government is vested in a few.
Accordingly, the best form of government is in a
state or kingdom, wherein one is given the power
to preside over all; while under him are others hav
ing governing powers. And yet a government of
this kind is shared by all., both because all are eligi
ble to govern, and because the rulers are chosen by
all. For this is the best form of polity, being partly
kingdom, since there is one at the head of all ; partly
aristocracy, in so far as a number of persons are set
in authority; partly democracy, i.e., government by
the people, in so far as the rulers can be chosen
from the people, and the people have the right to
choose their rulers."1

In this passage, written about 1250, the follow
ing political principles are affirmed: universal suf
frage, the right of the humblest citizen to be raised
to the highest power, the consecration of personal
worth and virtue, a representative and elective
monarchy, and the right of the people to delegate,
to those who are most worthy of it, that sacred gift
of God called power.

This pregnant text contains in a condensed form,

ir> Humma Theol. la^ae, q. CV, art. 1. English translation (Domi
nicans), Part II (First Part), Third Number, p. 250, Benzinger,
1915, New York.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES Z55

in "latin lapidaire," a considerable number of prob
lems, of which we shall consider only a few.

First, since the state must serve the good of the
individual, it is necessary that those whom the
popular will places at the head shall have intelli
gence, and sufficient moral integrity, to see and un
derstand the public interest and to promote it.
Thus, government by insight is necessary. Reason,
which is given such a high place in the economy of
individual life,17 is also the sovereign guide in social
life. The system of delegated power will be the
more perfect in proportion as it sees to it that
power shall be placed in the hands of the most de
serving, — or, rather, the most virtuous, to use the
mediaeval phrase. Again, men of action ought to
be under the direction of men of insight; for, "in
the direction of human affairs, excess arises from
the fact that the man at the head really has no head.
Those who excel in powers of understanding are
natural leaders," — in regirnine humano inordinatio
provenit ex eo quod non propter intcllectus prae-
eminentiam aliquis praeest™

This is why the most perfect form of delegation
of power is the elective system; for as Thomas
writes in his commentary on the Politics of Aris
totle, election is a work of reason,™ and the means

IT See above ch. VIII, iii and iv.

is Contra Gentiles, lib. Ill, cap. 78. Illi qui intellerhi praeeminent
naturaliter dominantur.

in Eleotin per sc est appetitus ratione drterininatns. f'om. in Politic.,
lib. Ill, lectio 14.

256 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

of choosing the most worthy. Such election applies
to the monarch, and also to his ministers in the gov
ernment, whom Thomas includes in his composite
form of government without defining their func
tions.

Finally, Thomas lays down a condition for the
exercise of popular election: it is necessary that the
people be sufficiently informed on the issues at
stake, and in consequence they must undergo a
political education, an education in citizenship.
Thus, in agreement with Augustine, he says: "If
the people have a sense of moderation and respon
sibility, and are most careful guardians of the com
mon weal, it is right to enact a law allowing such a
people to choose their own magistrates for the gov
ernment of the commonwealth. But if, as time
goes on, the same people became so corrupt as to
sell their votes, and entrust the government to
scoundrels and criminals, then the right of appoint
ing their public officials is properly forfeited by
such a people, and the choice devolves upon a few
good men."2 We see here again, as always, how
our fundamental principle comes into play: popu
lar suffrage must contribute to the realization in
the state of the good of all. If popular suffrage
itself is detrimental, its exercise must be sus
pended.

20 Stimma Tlieol, l*2*e, q. XCVII, art. 1.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 257

How does the sovereign power, whatever it be,
carry out its functions? According to scholastic
philosophy, the essential attribute, which enables a
government to fulfil its mission, is the power to
establish laws. To establish laws for others is, in
deed, the most natural form of order.

The theory of human law, in the page of Thomas
Aquinas, is intimately bound up with his psychol
ogy and ethics and metaphysics; and it forms part
of an original whole which can be called briefly
"the system of laws."2 Human or positive law,
lex humana seu positiva, has a twofold aspect;
namely, the jus gentium, which belongs to all peo
ples alike, and the jus civile, civil law, which be
longs properly to a single state as such. In either
case, this human law is simply a derivative from
natural law; and natural law in turn is only the
application — to man as a natural creature — of the
eternal decree of the uncreated wisdom, lex aeterna.

With regard to the question now before us, it
will be sufficient to say that the law of nature, or
natural human right, is that totality of regulations
which rests upon the fundamental perfection of the
human being; this does not change and cannot
change, because it abides in the mutual relationship
between the essence of God (the solitary support
of all reality) and His creatures. Thomistic phi-

TheoL, Ia2ae, qq. XC-C.

258 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

losophy sums it all up in this formula: the natural
law is a participation in the eternal law, — lex nat-
uralis est partidpatio quaedam leyis aeternae.22 It
follows, then, that each human individual bears in
himself a totality of rights and of duties, which are
the expression of his nature,- — that is to say, of his
status as a reasonable being. It also follows that
the natural precepts of this law, the principles of
social order, are the same for all men and for all
time, and that to destroy them would mean the de
struction of man himself. Positive, or human, law
cannot violate them. For, as Thomas says, in so
far as human law disagrees with the law of nature,
it is no longer a law, but a corruption of the law;23
it is placed outside the scope of human legislation.

The human law, indeed, draws its strength, its
raison d'etre, only from natural law, — of which it
is the echo, so to speak, the lengthening out, the ful
filling. Direct applications, evident corollaries of
the social nature of man, belong to the jus gentium,
(that which is right for all nations) such as "justice
in buying and selling and other similar things, with
out which social life would be impossible."24

But there are less obvious and more remote con
sequences of the natural law; and there are appli
cations which vary, according to the concrete cir
cumstances peculiar to each state. It rests with

22 Ibid., q. XCT, art. 2.

23 Ibid., q. XCV, art. 2.

24 Ibid.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 259

the government of particular groups, to determine
these; and this is done under the form of positive
law. For example, the natural law demands that
the malefactor be punished; but it does not indicate
the method or form of punishment, — whether he
ought to be punished by fine or by prison or by
death.25 It is left to the wisdom of human law to
set right the implications of natural law.

Thus, securely linked with the law of nature, all
human law is bound up with reason, which is the
basis of being human. "Human law is an ordi
nance of reason for the common good, made by him
who has care of the community, and promulgated."2

To be sure, the state described by Thomas Aqui
nas is an ideal, or theoretical conception. As such
of course it could not be realized in practice in any
complete sense; for real societies are too complex
to conform to any set or uniform scheme. But with
this reservation, it seems fair to say that the great
European states, which were all then in process of
formation, attempted from their several angles to
realize in fact some such system of "limited mon
archy" as Thomas outlines. For example, the
France of Louis IX, in which the transmission of
power, resting upon the popular will, was modify-
as Ibid.

20 Quaedam rationis ordinatio ad bonum commune et ab eo qu'
curam communitatis habet, promulgata. Ibid., q. XC, art. 4.

260 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

ing the growing power of the king by a certain sys
tem of control, the England of the thirteenth cen
tury and a little later, was bringing its kings face
to face with national parliaments; about the same
time Spain also achieves its Cortes, a popular as
sembly raised up in the midst of the centralized
government of Castile and Aragon.27 Everywhere,
the supreme prerogative of sovereignty lay in the
exercise of the judicial power, which was nothing
but the logical consequence of the power to give
orders and to enforce them. Everywhere were
manifest those efforts towards a more perfect con
sistency. But on the other hand, these efforts never
attained to that form of administrative centraliza
tion which we have come to know in the modern
state.

Then again it is important to note that the Tho-
mistic doctrines applied to states and not to na
tions. The sentiment of love for fatherland, which
appeared in the Chanson de Roland — where la
douce terre de France is spoken of — found its place
in the moral system of Thomas Aquinas. He
speaks of the jiietas which we owe to our natal soil,

27 Concerning the historical origin of the divers political functions
in Capetian France (the notion of the royal officium, the role of
justioier played by the sovereign, the oath of fidelity from subjects,
the importance of the elections and of the "sacre" and coronation,
the designatio of the heir apparent before Louis VII), see Luchaire.
Histoire des institutions monarchiques sous les premiers cape'tiens
(987-1180), vol. I, Paris, 1891. Of. Zeiller, L'idte de I'Etat dans
St. Thomas, Paris, 1910.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 261

— in qua nati et nutriti suinus; and he considers the
citizen to be a debtor to his fatherland, "debitor
patriae"2*

But nation means more than state and father
land. In our modern conception, a nation presup
poses a strongly organized state, — with an accumu
lation of traditions behind it, with institutions,
rights and feelings, with victories and sufferings,
and with a certain type of mind (religious, moral,
and artistic). These are its elements. The result
is that the bond which unites the nation is above all
psychical in character (intellectual and moral),
rather than territorial or racial.

Now the European nations, thus defined, did not
exist in the thirteenth century : they were in process
of formation. The monarchical states were to be
come the nuclei of the nations of modern times.
War was not then a contest between two nations,
but a struggle between two members of a single
family, or two kings, or two vassals, or between the
vassal and the lord. It retained the character of a
private feud; and the same is true of the quarrels
between towns and between classes in the same
town. Hence, in his philosophical doctrine of war,
Thomas Aquinas insists that a war, to be just, must
be declared by the legitimate authority.

It was just because the states of the thirteenth
century were not formed into clearly defined na
tions, that they had more traits in common than

Theol, 2*2**, q. CXXII, art. 5; q. CI, art. 1.

262 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

those of today. But they were on the point of be
coming diversified. The thirteenth century was
like a central plateau, and the streams which flowed
from it, cut their beds in different directions.

The Thomistic theory of the state represents the
crystallization of the political experiences of the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries; but it also repre
sents conformity with the feudal and civil and
canon law, which was making no little progress
during this time. Consequently the three systems
of legislation (feudal, civil, canon) are at one on
so many important points, such as the divine
origin of power, the subordination of the king to
law, the king's character as servitor of justice, the
force of custom, the intervention of the community
in the delegation of power to the prince, and the
participation of the people in government. In the
same way natural law is for the legists and canon
ists an ideal to which positive (human) legislation
must approach; and the prescription of the natural
law must be adopted in so far as it is possible in
existing circumstances.29

Finally, the thirteenth-century theory of the
state takes up and completes various philosophic
doctrines which had found credit among former
philosophers such as Manegold of Lautenbach, and

29 Cf. Carlyle, op. cit. For the civilian lawyers, vol. II, pp. 27,
49, 75; for the canonists, ibid., pp. 110, U5, cf. VIII, and p. 242;
for the feudal lawyers, vol. Ill, pp. 32, 34, 44, 51, 100, 106, 116,
125, 137, 147, 162, and the conclusion.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 263

John of Salisbury. But it has become a social phi
losophy, and it dresses all in a synthesis which is
found neither among the feudal theorists nor among
the legists, nor among the canonists, nor among the
philosophers of the preceding centuries. It co
ordinates all, and attaches the doctrines which it
establishes to a system of psychology, of morals, of
logic, and of metaphysics. It is a kind of democ
racy, conceived in moderation, and based upon the
pluralistic conception of the world and of life.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PROGRESS

i. The constant and the permanent, ii. Progress in science
in morals, in social and political justice, in civilization.

Is there a place in the scholasticism of the thir
teenth century for a theory of progress? The ques
tion concerns not only the system of human laws;
it is a general problem, and therefore, it must be
solved according to general principles. Let us ob
serve briefly how scholasticism succeeded in recon
ciling the constant and the variable, and in what
degree it admits the possibility of change for the
better.

We have already seen1 what a capital role the
stable and the permanent played in the thirteenth-
century conception of the world. Essences are un
changeable, and by them the natural species are
fixed; they are imitations of the essence of God;
and the degree of imitability does not change.
From this it follows that what constitutes man, his
quiddity as they then said, is everywhere and al-

i Ch. IX, iv.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 265

ways the same. One is either a man or not a man.
Essentia non susdpit plus vel minus. Similarly,
the first principles of reason — that is to say, the
judgements which express the fundamental relations
of all being, the prerequisites of whatever reality
may come into actual existence — are stable and per
manent; their necessity and their universality are
absolute. Take, for example, the principle of con
tradiction: "that which is cannot not be," or the
principle of causality: quidquid movetur ab olio
movetur. The scholastics referred to these princi
ples as per se notae, knowable of themselves; for,
merely by understanding the subject and predicate
one can grasp the absolute necessity of the relation
which unites them, independently of all experience,
and in consequence independently of all existence.
The first principles of mathematics, although less
general in that they have to do only with quantity,
express in the same way invariable relations.

Nor is it otherwise with the principles of moral
and social order. That good must be done and
wrong avoided, that the state is for the good of
individuals, are principles necessary and fixed; and
we have seen that there exist rights derived from
nature, which no human legislation can violate.
However, the necessity of these moral and social
principles is of a different kind from that of mathe
matical propositions, and of the principles of rea
son. These moral principles imply a condition;
nameljT, the existence of humanity in its actual

260 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

state, — the fact of creation. The same also holds
true concerning the principles of the natural sci
ences. Hence, such principles are not knowable by
mere analysis and comparison of their subject and
their predicate (per se notae) ; they manifestly rest
on observation and on experience (per aliud nota) .'

On the other hand, the world of limited existence
involves change, and scholasticism studied with
care the problem of change. The doctrine of act
and potency, — the actuality and potentiality in
each changing being — is nothing but their solution
of this problem.3 Change appears everywhere in
the physical world. But change itself follows cer
tain uniformities; it is dominated by finality. The
unvarying return of the seasons, the movements of
the planets, the cycle of physical and chemical laws,
the recurrence of vital phenomena in plants and
animals, — all of these exhibit the striking regular
ity which is inherent in the realm of change. In so
far as one considers inorganic beings, the vegetable
and animal world, this same recurrence admits of
no exception. It is not only the species which are
fixed; the activities exhibited by the most diverse

- On the scholastic distinction between judgements per tte nota and
per aliud nota (aUitd here means observation and experience), see
Mercier, Logique, Louvain, 1919, pp. 135 ff. C'f. Thomas Aquinas, De
anima, II, 14.

3 See above ch. IX, iii.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 267

individuals beings do not vary. In regard to evolu
tion, as we understand it today, the dynamic meta
physics of scholasticism neither includes nor ex
cludes the change of one species into another. The
problem did not present itself in the thirteenth
century. Neither the theory of transformism nor
the theory of mutation is irreconcilable with the
scholastic theory of the world. Indeed, as we have
seen above, a substance transforms itself always
into another species of substance,- — it does not mat
ter how.

But human acts, are they bound by the same uni
formities, — or, on the contrary, is human progress
really possible? The question is the more interest
ing because the thirteenth century believed that it
had realized a state of stable equilibrium, and be
cause their extraordinary optimism lead them to
believe that they had arrived at a state close to
perfection. Accordingly it is necessary to explain
how they conceived of humanity as having tra
versed the lower stages in order to arrive at this
degree of perfection.

A precise formulation is furnished by their meta
physical psychology. Human nature is the same in
all men, and whatever rests on this nature is stable
and uniform. But the faculties, — the direct source
of activities — differ from man to man, in power and
in flexibility. The intelligence and the will are
energetic in a greater or a less degree ; they are sus
ceptible of being perfected by education, and this

268 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

perfecting itself is indefinite. The repetition of
activities engenders permanent dispositions (habi
tus), which intensify effort. So it is that there is
a place for progress in science. That which men
have riot been able to discover up to any given time,
may some day be discovered by a genius more pene
trating. Thomas Aquinas applies this to the geo
centric hypothesis of which he foresees the possible
supplanting.4 Science, moreover, is regarded as a
collective treasure, which is unceasingly increased
by the contributions of succeeding generations.5

In the domain of morals and of social- justice, the
place accorded to change (of course change for the
better) is much more important. The concern here
is not with the increase of moral or social judge
ments, as was the case with science; but real trans
formation, and adaptation, is involved, and the un
derlying reason for this is found in human liberty.
Aside from the immutable principles (the point of
departure and the standard of morality), scholasti
cism recognizes that there are applications of these
principles more or less distinct, and more or less
variable.6 These principles govern the majority
of cases, but they admit of exceptions. Reason has
to weigh the value of all the circumstances which
envelop a concrete and practical application of a
moral law. The more numerous these circum-

4C/. above, p. 113.

s Cf. above, pp. 139 ff.

ecy. above, p. 259.

269

stances become, the greater is the elasticity of the
law. The matter is well and clearly put by Thomas
Aquinas7 as follows: "As to the proper conclu
sions of the practical reason, neither is the truth or
rectitude the same for all, nor, where it is the same,
is it equally known by all. Thus it is right and true
for all to act according to reason, and from this
principle it follows as a proper conclusion, that
goods entrusted to another should be restored to
their owner. Now this is true for the majority of
cases; but it may happen in a particular case that
it would be injurious, and therefore unreasonable
to restore goods held in trust; for instance, if they
are claimed for the purpose of fighting against
one's country. And this principle will be found to
fail the more, according as we descend further into
detail, e.g., if one were to say that goods held in
trust should be restored with such and such a guar
antee, or in such and such a way; because the
greater the number of conditions added, the greater
the number of ways in which the principle may fail,
so that it be not right to restore or not to restore."
The fundamental inclination towards good abides
in the depths of human conscience; it can be dark
ened, obtenebrari, but not extinguished. In the
worst men, human nature remains good and retains
the indelible imprint of the eternal law.8

As for social truths and social laws, these are

7 Summa Thcol., la^ae, q. XCIV, art. 4. Dominican trans., p. 48.
a Ibid., q. XCVI, art. 6.

270 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

even more subject to the conditions of tempora, of
neyotia, of pcrsunae than are the laws of the moral
individual.1' They vary with them; they are not en
dowed with infallibilities.™ Hence progress in hu
man legislation is possible. It is eertain that the
system of limited monarchy, to which Thomas
Aquinas gives his preference, constituted in his
eyes a step forward from the primitive forms of
government which he enumerates. In the follow
ing fine passage Thomas shows how law, as well as
science, is capable of progress. "Thus there may be
two causes for the just change of human law: one
on the part of reason; the other on the part of man
whose acts are regulated by law. The cause on the
part of reason is that it seems natural to human
reason to advance gradually from the imperfect to
the perfect. Hence, in speculative sciences, we see
that the teaching of the early philosophers was im
perfect, and that it was afterwards perfected by
those who succeeded them. So also in practical
matters: for those who first endeavoured to discover
something useful for the human community, not
being able by themselves to take everything into
consideration, set up certain institutions which
were deficient in many ways; and these were
changed by subsequent lawgivers who made insti
tutions that might prove less frequently deficient in

^ I hid., Ia2ae, q. XCVI, art. 1. Cf. the whole of q. XCVI1 ("De
nuitatione Icgum").

10 Ibid., q. XC1, art. 3, ad tertium.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 271

respect of the common weal. On the part of man,
whose acts are regulated by law, the law can be
rightly changed on account of the changed condi
tion of man, to whom different things are expe
dient according to the difference of his condition."1

Thus the Thomistic theory opens the way for
progress in human legislation; and since legislation
is the attribute of sovereignty, it opens the way
likewise for progress in the government of states.
But forthwith Thomas adds this counsel of wis
dom: not without good reasons, should human law
be changed. For, any change in the law is made at
the expense of the power and majesty that reside in
the legislative power, — quando lex mutatur, dimi-
mtitur vis constructiva legist2

On the basis of Thomistic principles, it is there
fore possible to justify a series of progressive
measures. The thirteenth century could of course
not envisage them; but they are in the logic of its
system. For, whatever the government may be, it
must look ever towards betterment (ut sit de pro-
motione solicitus) ; it must put at the disposal of
individuals the means of perfecting their person
ality. It must assure, for example, all that con
cerns education of the physical faculties, of the in
telligence, and of the moral will; it must organize
the conditions of production and of work.13 A like

n Jlnd., q. XCVTI, art. 1. Dominican trans., p. 77.
12 77. iV.. q. XCVIT, art. 2.
i3C'/. above, p. 2-tfi.

272 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

mission belongs to the social authority, whatever
may be the form of this authority. Following the
fine and judicious distinction of Thomas, one must
determine in varying circumstances, just what form
of government is most propitious to the realization
of its social mission.

Finally, like the state and the collective life, hu
man civilization in its entirety is capable of prog
ress; for it is the result of human activities which
are always perfectible. Education, heredity, the
influence of authority, can all act on the develop
ment of the artistic faculties, of scientific labours, of
customs, of religious practice.

To sum up, then. Fixity of essences and essen
tial relations; act and potency; perfectibility of
faculties; liberty and adaptability of the collective
life to circumstances and needs, — these are the
principles by which scholasticism solved the prob
lem of progress. They did so by answering in their
way the ancient Greek query: How reconcile the
fixed and the changing;'

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

PHILOSOPHY AND NATIONAL TEMPERAMENT
IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

i. Scholastic philosophy reflected in the temperament of
the peoples who created it. ii. Three main doctrines: the
value of the individual; intellectualism ; moderation, iii.
Scholastic philosophy the product of Neo-Latin and Anglo-
Celtic minds ; Germanic contribution virtually negligible, iv.
Latin Averroism in the thirteenth century, v. The lure of Neo-
Platonism to the German, vi. The chief doctrines opposed
to the scholastic tendencies: lack of clearness; inclination to
pantheism ; deductive method a outrance ; absence of moder
ation.

SCHOLASTIC philosophy is the dominant philosophy
of the thirteenth century. Such is the outstanding
fact, the significance of which we have attempted
to estimate by correlating it with the other factors
of that civilization.

This philosophy is the result of a slow and pro
gressive development, and it follows the general
trend of western civilization. The doctrinal fer
mentation, rather slow in its beginning, becomes in
tensified in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, as
the social and political structure is taking its feudal

274 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

form; and it reaches its most fruitful period just
as the distinctly mediaeval mode — of life and of
thought and of feeling — is revealing itself clearly
in every department of human activity. This great
philosophical system reflects the unifying tenden
cies of the time; its influence is cosmopolitan; its
optimism, its impersonality, and its religious ten
dencies place it in accord with the entire civiliza
tion; and its doctrines exert a profound influence
on art and on literature and on social hahits.

As scholastic philosophy is the work of western
races, it is likewise an original product. In it the
western peoples reproduce, to he sure, the prob-
lems of the Greek and the Oriental worlds. But
the solutions of these problems are cast in a new
mould, they are imbued with a new mentality.
Herein lies the secret of the wonderful growth and
expansion of the scholastic philosophy in the West.

Seeing that the peoples of the West were con
stantly preoccupied with it, there is little wonder
that this philosophy should have played a part in
moulding philosophical temperament; that it should
have given them an intellectual bent, a specific turn
of mind. We need not be surprised then to find,—
in that unique period of history when the minds of
the various European peoples were taking on their
several casts, — the development of certain general
characteristics, whose influence survived in philos
ophy after the thirteenth century, and even the
whole Middle Ages.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 275

Economic forms, political organization, structure
of social classes, artistic culture, — these all disap
pear, or are transformed; indeed, by the end of the
fourteenth century, these elements of the civiliza
tion have lost their distinctly mediaeval signifi
cance. But moral and philosophical temperaments
endure, because they belong to the deeper lying
emanations of human spirit. In the individual
man, the bodily temperament, which depends upon
physiological conditions, persists throughout his en •
tire life. Similarly, in a group of individuals the
mental temperament, which finds its support in
common ideals, both intellectual and moral, sur
vives in the race. Thus, the habits of honour and
courtesy, under the combined influence of Church
and feudal society, were transmitted through suc
ceeding generations as staple realities, — which we
find even today in our modern conscience. In like
manner, the philosophical temperament of the
thirteenth century, — I mean the setting in opera
tion of certain methods and doctrines — entered into
the modern epoch and even now directs our mode
of thought. Indeed, scholastic philosophy set in
operation three main doctrines, — which may also be
called methods — which have become our common
approach to problems and their solutions.

The first of these doctrines lays emphasis upon
the worth of the individual, or person, as the only

276 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

human reality. Scholastic philosophy, being a
pluralistic conception of the world, makes of each
man an autonomous agent, having a body and an
intelligence and a will and a liberty all his own.
Each human individual possesses abilities which
give to him as a representative of the race a purely
personal power of action; and this inequality of
faculties explains the several capacities of various
individuals for artistic or scientific or professional
or public life. The human individual has a right
to personal happiness and is called after death to
enjoy personal blessedness. He is protected
against the state, or the group, by a whole system
of intangible rights.1 Accordingly, the philosophy
of the thirteenth century is opposed to everything
that resembles the subjugation of one man to an
other. For the same reason, it exhibits a profound
dislike for monism and pantheism; it was at great
pains, and this cannot be too strongly emphasized,
to eliminate every pantheistic tendency from its
teaching. Indeed it developed a horror for any
doctrine which fuses in one sole being some or all
beings, — in particular, which makes all men parts
or becomings of a great whole, of one Being, and
which therefore suppresses their individuality.

This doctrine, that the individual alone is sub
stantial reality, and alone has real value in the uni
verse, is of course Aristotelian in origin. It is
written on the first page of his Metaphysics, that

i Cf. chs. IX and X.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 277

splendid book of common-sense which has nour
ished the thought of men for two thousand years.
But with their special concern for the natural
equality of human beings, the scholastics went
much further than did Aristotle. While he stated
that men are naturally unlike, and that nature
made freemen of some and slaves of others, the
scholastics regarded slavery and serfdom as con
ventional, — not as natural. And we may be sure
that if this turn of thought — a turn toward en
hanced value of the individual — had not been in
accord with the deepest aspirations of the mediaeval
civilization (in the peoples who were its supreme
representatives), it would never have found en
trance into their marrow, and into their blood.
For, the western minds took only what suited them,
—whether from Aristotle or Plato or Augustine or
Avicenna or Averroes — and they took it because it
suited them.

Nothing is more false than the judgement, which
finds credit among so many historians, that one
must await the Renaissance to see human person
ality appraised at its true worth. There are few
philosophers who have accentuated the metaphysi
cal, the psychological, the moral, and the social
value of the individual so much as did the schol
astics. And just as the thirteenth century is a
century of striking personalities, it is also a cen
tury of discussions on all the problems which the
question of personality raises.

278 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

There is a second doctrine which also involves
the philosophical mentality, and which is closely
connected with that which we have just exposited.
This is intellectualism, or the royal rule of reason
in man, and in all that concerns human life. It
introduces the supremacy of reason into all depart
ments of human activity.2 Thomas Aquinas and
Duns Scotus are its striking representatives; but
it is also found though in a lesser degree, in all of
the scholastic philosophers.

It is because the dominant philosophy of the
thirteenth century was an intellectual philosophy,
that it promoted a love of clearness and precision;
that it struggled against the perplexing vagueness
of Arabian mysticism; that it introduced into dis
cussions an atmosphere of precision and exactness
which exercised on the formation of the developing
minds the most beneficent influence. It is to this
mental discipline that the philosophical Latin of
the masters owes its pliability, — and to the same
source the modern languages are indebted for large
portions of their vocabularies.2" We have already
seen how this intellectualism and love of clarity are
revealed in the most important forms of thirteenth-
century culture.2"

But, in addition to individualism and intellec
tualism, there is a third deep lying character which

2 Of. ch. VIII.

2a Of. above, p. 176.

2" See ch. VII, v.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 279

enters into the temperament of those who framed
and developed scholastic philosophy. And this is
their spirit of moderation., — a moderation revealed
in considered choice. Their philosophy is the via
media between the views of Plato and of Aristotle ;
it tempers the naturalism of the latter with the
idealism of the former. Thus the equilibrium which
appears in all the social forces of that age manifests
itself in their dominant philosophy.

We have seen3 how scholastic metaphysics is a
dynamic philosophy; but its dynamic character is
moderate, — because the form or the principle of
any given perfection, that may reside in each be
ing, unfolds in matter. It gives the corporeal
world an evolutionary interpretation; but this is a
mitigated evolution, since it does not apply to the
essences themselves. Thus, for example, their con
ception of evolution combines efficient causality
and finality; it furnishes a moderate realistic solu
tion, by reconciling the individual nature of ex
ternal realities with the abstract character of our
corresponding concepts.*

Scholastic psychology is a moderate form of
idealism, since abstract ideas arise in sense-percep
tion,5 and man is regarded as a unitary combination
of both soul and body. Similarly, this moderation
finds expression in their ethics, which explains the

s See ch, IX, iii and iv.
•* See above, pp. 59 and 181.
s Cf. ch. VIII, i.

280 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

compatibility of duty with pleasure, and of varia
ble moral laws with its unchangeable principles.6
The same is true of their aesthetics, since the beau
tiful is at once subjective and objective. And again
in their logic this same spirit appears, as they estab
lish the right of both deduction and induction.
This moderation appears also in their social phi
losophy; for sovereignty in the state belongs both
to the people and to those who receive power, by
delegation from the people.7 Moderation is like
wise found in their theory of progress and culture,
which takes account of both that which is fixed in
human nature and that which is changeable and
perfectible.8

Thus, in all of its reflection scholasticism seeks
the golden mean and avoids extremes ; it delights in
the solution that mediates between opposing views.
For all these reasons it is a profoundly human phi
losophy , — that is, a philosophy which is fitted for
beings bound by corporeal conditions and yet also
participating in the spiritual realm.

The importance of personality, the supremacy
of reason and of clear ideas, a sense of measure and
of moderation in the doctrines which constitute it;
these three characteristics of scholastic philosophy
are in perfect accord with the western civilization
of the thirteenth century.

eCf. ch. XII, ii.
7 Cf. ch. XII.
»Cf. ch. XI, iii.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 281

III

And now we must consider a further fact — one
of central importance. This civilization is above
all the product of French influence; France is the
centre from which it casts its light everywhere.9
From this angle, it is interesting to note how the
masters of scholastic philosophy, those who brought
it to its full development and who affixed to it the
imprint of their genius, were all educated in France,
—whether French or Italian or English or Flem
ish, or Walloon. Thomas Aquinas and Bonaven-
ture belong to great Italian families; Alexander of
Hales, Duns Scotus, William of Occam, and many
more, are Anglo-Celts; Gerard of Abbeville, Wil
liam of Auvergne, William of Auxerre belong to
France; Henry of Ghent, Siger of Courtrai are
natives of Flanders; Godfrey of Fontaines is of
the nobility of Liege. All of these masters met in
Paris, where they resided and taught; and they are
therefore French by education. Scholastic philos
ophy in the thirteenth century is even more a sys
tem of Gallicae Sententiae than it was in the time
of Adelard of Bath.110

On the other hand, the role of the Germans is
surprisingly negligible. The only personality of
note that comes from beyond the Rhine is Swabian,
Albert the Great, Count of Bollstadt. His contri
bution to scholastic philosophy is deserving of the

a See chs. II, ii; III, i; IV, ii, iii; V, Iv.
1° Cf. above, p. 41.

282 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

closest attention; but his services are of a very spe
cial kind. Albert the Great was an indefatigable
compiler of texts, a tireless commentator, an ob
server of facts, an excellent encyclopedist; but he
was not a profound philosopher.11

I do not mean, of course, that the Germans had
no share in the philosophy of the thirteenth cen
tury; for they produced some men whose thought
is of the greatest significance in respect to
civilization. But their philosophy is not scholastic
philosophy, as we have been at pains to outline it
in these pages. Their system of thought contained
seeds which were foreign to the scholastic genius;
and therein are found the beginnings of their later
deepest aspirations.

This contrast between the two types of mind is
both striking and instructive. We may therefore
profitably consider it more closely in concluding
our study.

What is this philosophy to which the Germans so
generally gave preference? To understand the full
significance of this question, it is necessary to con
sider the non-scholastic philosophies of the thir
teenth century.

11 Cf. Schneider, "Beitrage zur Psychologic Alberts des Grossen,"
'Baiimker's-Beitrage, IV, 5, 1903. Albert in de animalibiis is fond
of distinguishing the Germani and the Galli. Cf. H. J. Stadler, Al-
bertus Magnus de animalibus L. XXVI. Baiimker's-Bei'fra'^e, XV-
XVI, 1916 and 1921. Incices, verbis Galli, Germania, Germani.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 283

It should be stated at once that we must disre
gard the unusual; for our study is one of general
tendencies. In that century, which was so rich in
important personalities there were certain isolated
but brilliant thinkers, who swept the philosophic
sky in meteor-like fashion, — leaving little trace of
real influence on their environment. Roger Bacon
is perhaps the most fascinating of these men. But
while he was far beyond his day in all matters
touching mathematics and natural science, he fell
just as far behind in his view of philosophy itself, —
as mere apologetics in furthering religion. Thus
he represents a twofold anachronism, — not only in
science, but in philosophy as well! Hence, how
ever interesting this personality of the thirteenth
century may be, he remains none the less an ex
ception, and deserves only a secondary place in our
study.

Aside from scholastic philosophy, two principal
currents of thought manifest themselves, — namely,
Latin Averroism and Xeo-Platonism. These are all
the more marked by the upheaval which they occa
sioned; nevertheless, in contrast with the great
river of scholasticism, they are really mere rivulets.
The first emerges suddenly ; but it disappears grad
ually from view, in the fifteenth century, — like a
stream which sinks into some subterranean channel.
The second, on the other hand, arose slowly, but it
widened its channel and deepened its current; and,

284 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

as it did so, it carried with it the German genius.
Let us consider each of these in turn.

Latin Averroism differs from scholastic philos
ophy as the Gothic cathedral differs from the Ara
bian mosque, — and not as the Cathedral of Amiens
differs from that of Chartres. The conflict be
tween the one and the other presents two distinct
conceptions of the world and of life, two systems
of metaphysics and of psychology.

The researches of Mandonnet have served to en
rich our acquaintance with the origin and nature of
these Averroistic doctrines.12 That they appeared
at Paris about 1256, and that between 1260 and
1270 they were the source of much disturbance to
the Faculty of Arts of the University, are now
clearly established facts. In the philosophic duel
which then was waged between scholasticism and
Latin Averroism, there appeared Thomas Aquinas
as the champion of the former, and Siger of Bra
bant, a Fleming who championed the latter and
gathered about him a small number of admiring
followers. To combat the Averroistic doctrines,
all the scholastics united in an alliance, both of
fensive and defensive, — including also such men as
Roger Bacon.13

12 See P. Mandonnet, "Siger de Brabant et 1'Averroisme latin
au XIIIme s." in Les Philosophes Beiges, vol. VI (1911) and VII
(1908), Louvain.

is Thomas Aquinas wrote a special treatise entitled De unitate in-
tellectus contra Averroistas. Duns Scotus speaks of Averroes as
"maledictus ille Averroes" (Oxon. IV, d. 43, q. 2, no. 5).

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 285

In this contest we may confine our attention to
two principal doctrines, which the scholastics never
tired of attacking, — namely, the theory of one
single soul for all mankind, and the theory of the
twofold truth. The former has to do with an im
portant aspect of psychology, and it has signifi
cant bearings on religion; the latter involves the
relation of philosophy and theology. We shall
treat briefly of each.

This theory of the single intelligence in men
teaches, that all human thoughts occur by virtue of
a single intelligence, which belongs to the race,—
and, as substance, remains in a state of isolation
from the individual human beings. Our personal
thoughts arise, when our individual sense percep
tions and imaginations are illuminated by this
single intelligence, by virtue of its momentary ac
tion in union with the sensitive soul (anima sensi-
bilis) in each of us. Furthermore — and as a con
sequence of this — the soul of mankind is alone en
dowed with immortality, and the soul or form that
is individual in each of us passes away at death.
Men die; the soul of the race is immortal.

Such a doctrine runs counter to any deep sense
of human personality, by minimizing the individ
ual aspects of thinking and of religious experience,
—and by eliminating personal immortality. The
bitter struggle of the scholastics against this doc
trine is therefore readily intelligible as a register
ing of their profound yearning for, and emphasis

286 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

upon, the value of human personality. TrainiV4
portrayal of the defeat of Averroes (and the other
productions inspired by Traini's great work) re
flect also this same sense of personal worth em
bedded in the wider complex of that civilization,
society at large, of which philosophy is a part.

The theory of the twofold truth15 asserts, that a
doctrine may be true in philosophy but false in
theology, and conversely. This pragmatic doctrine
enabled the harmonizing with Catholic dogma of
ideas which were utterly foreign to its spirit and
subversion of its teachings. Setting truth over
against itself, it contravenes the principle of contra
diction, — indispensable not only to the preserva
tion of theology, but also to the principles of moral
and social order. The deepest lying tendencies of
that civilization and the fundamental doctrines of
their logic and theology are alike incompatible with
the theory of the twofold truth. It was just this
incompatibility which lead to its formal condemna
tion in 1277 (as is clear from the beginning of that
interesting document) ;1G and the same is evident
in the work of Thomas against the Averroists.
Hence one can understand the intensity of the
struggle which the doctrine aroused in the schools.

Latin Averroism is not a product of occidental
thought, but an exotic importation. Its protagon-

n Cf. above, pp. 84 and 154.

is Cf. above, p. 165.

16 Denifle-Chatelain, Chartul. Univers. Paris. Vol. I, p. 543.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 287

ists proclaimed the philosophical infallibility of
Averroes, and it was their constant concern to
avoid betraying him. The motives which prompted
this occidental affiliation with the oriental interpre
tation of Aristotelian naturalism remain a matter
of conjecture. It may have been sincerity or con
viction; or, it may have been the desire to justify
the relaxation of faith and of morals, as Mandonnet
believes. But, in any event, it is certain that Latin
Averroism did not penetrate the mass of the intel
lectuals. At Paris it was the creed of a small
group ; and when the condemnation of 1277 checked
the professional career of Siger of Brabant, its ex
pansion was arrested, — though it did not entirely
disappear. Indeed, at the court of Frederic II,
King of The Sicilies, Averroism scored a local
triumph. But that court reflected the spirit of the
Orient far more than it did that of the Occident;
Frederic II being an Oriental prince both in caste
and in manners.

If Averroism did not penetrate the spirit of men
of learning in the western world, still less did it
penetrate into the channels of ordinary life.17 Be
ing, as a whole, alien to occidental civilization, it is
necessary to seek elsewhere the influence of the
Averroistic doctrines upon the civilization which
we have studied. First of all, it kindled an atmo
sphere of conflict; and thus it obliged scholastic

IT Alphand£ry, "Y-a-t-il eu un Averroisme populaire aux XIII"
et XIV'e s.?" (Revue de I'histoire des religions, 1901, p. 39'4.)

288 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

philosophy to formulate its position with greater
precision, and it united on fundamentals, those
who otherwise were divided. Furthermore, a few
detached theories of Averroism, by virtue of their
inherent force, continued their influence, — an in
fluence which increased during the centuries that
followed. For instance, the doctrine of the twofold
truth gradually undermined the Catholic faith ; and
certain Averroists of the fourteenth century lent
their support to the legists, who were engaged in
subordinating the Papacy to the State. Finally,
certain elements of Averroism contributed to rein
force another current of ideas born in the thir
teenth century, the Neo-Platonic current which we
must now consider.

Occidental Xeo-Platonism could no more com
pete in influence with the scholastic philosophy of
the thirteenth century than could Latin Averroism.
The doctrines of emanation and the vaporous mys
ticism of Proclus, — especially as contained in the
Liber de Causis — were in direct opposition to the
temper of scholasticism. But Neo-Platonism suc
ceeded in alluring a group of German philosophers ;
and in view of its contribution to the tendencies
which developed in Germany, especially during the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, its study is of
the greatest historical interest. It is not within the
scope of the present work to examine in detail the

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 289

Neo-Platonic movement of the thirteenth century,
which would involve a separate study; we shall
therefore touch upon it only, and give in outline
certain general results.

The first translators of Neo-Platonic works-
such as Robert Grosseteste, Alfredus Anglicus,
and William of Moerbeke — had no sympathy with
Neo-Platonism, other than the special fondness
which every translator of that age felt for the work
which he translated. And the same may be said
of Albert the Great as commentator, for, in com
mentating Aristotle and Neo-Platonic writings, re
spectively, he inclines toward each in turn.

But in the second half of the thirteenth century a
group of German philosophers turn deliberatively
to certain Neo-Platonic theses. These men are
contemporaries of, or immediate successors to,
Albert the Great; and several of them, like Albert
himself, are dignitaries of the Dominican order in
Germany. I refer to Ulric of Strasburg, the im
mediate disciple of Albert, to the Silesian Witelo,
to Thierry of Freiburg (in Germany), to Berthold
of Mosburg, perhaps a disciple of Albert, and to
Meister Eckhart, the most celebrated of all. These
thinkers succeed in coordinating the whole of their
doctrines, in organic unity, on the basis of Neo-
Platonic thought. In different degrees, their works
combine the emanational view of reality, the ten
dency to make knowledge arise in the soul indepen-

290 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

dent of the external world, and the mystic impulse
toward the infinite.

Xow, if we confine our enquiry to Thierry of
Freiburg and Meister Eckhart — the striking per
sonalities of the group — it is very remarkable that
these men (whose works are now published or well
known)18 part deliberately with the scholastic phi
losophy, — the philosophy which dominates the
minds of Xeo-Latins and the Anglo-Celts, and with
which the German thinkers are thoroughly familiar.
Thus, Thierry of Freiburg says expressly, that he
wished to separate himself from those who taught
the common philosophy, — from the communiter lo-
quentes — and he boasts of it.19 The same sense of

is I here give the works of these men. The bibliography, at the
end of these lectures, may be consulted for details. Ulric
of Strasbourg is the author of a treatise entitled De Summo Bono,
of which brief fragments have been published (cf. Ueberweg-Baum-
gartner, op. cit., p. 462). Witelo wrote a work on Optics (De Per-
spectiva), and he is probably the author of the treatise De Intelli-
gentiis. The works of Thierry of Freiburg have been published by
Krebs. Berthold of Mosburg wrote a commentary on the Elementa
Theologica of Proclus. According to Dyroff ("Ueber Heinrich und
Dietrich von Freiburg," Philos. Jhrb., 1915, pp. 55-63), the Henry of
Freiburg ("de Uriberch"), — who probably belonged to the same
family as Thierry of Freiburg, and lived at the same time — translated
into German verse the mystical and Neo-Platonic discourses of
Thierry of Freiburg. The German works of Eckhart have been
published by Pfeiffer (1857), and fragments of his Latin works by
Denifle (Archiv f. Litt. u. Kirchengesch. d. Mittelalt., 1886).

" See above, Sententia communis, p. 83. Cf. E. Krebs, "Meister

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 291

difference appears in Eckhart, who says concerning
some of his own doctrines : primo aspectu monstruo-
sa} dubia aut falsa apparebunt, secus autem si sol-
lerter et studdosius pertractantur"20 Both of these
thinkers take over certain characteristics and ten
dencies which are diametrically opposed to the ten
dency of thought of the Neo-Latins and the Anglo-
Celts, which we have pointed out.

The first character is a lack of clearness in
thought and of precision in language. Although
he uses the fixed terminology of the scholastics, the
celebrated Eckhart is an obscure thinker, — "Ein
unklarer Denker" said Denifle,21 his best historian
and himself a German. To the clear ideas and pre
cise expressions of scholastic philosophy, Neo-
Platonic Germans oppose ambiguous theories and
misleading comparisons. Their thoughts do not
seek the clear light, and they are satisfied with ap
proximations. Their imaginations delight in an
alogies, notably in the comparison of emanation
with radiation or flowing, by which they represent
creation as a stream of water which flows from the
divine source and as a light which shines forth froni
the luminous hearth of the Divinity. Thierry
speaks of the creative act by which God produces
Intelligences, as an ebullitio, an interior transfusion

Dietrich, s. Leben, s. Werke, s. Wissenschaft,"
V, 5-6, 1906, pp. 150, 151.

20 Denifle, Meister Eckharts lateinische Schriften, p. 535.

21 Edit., Denifle, p. 459.

292 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

by which His nature, sovereignly blessed and fer
tile, pours itself out.22

This brings us to a second characteristic, very
much more important, in which the philosophy of
the Germans of the thirteenth century is opposed
to scholastic philosophy. This is the leaning to
wards pantheism, which unites men with God even
to the point of fusion; the carrying of the soul for
commerce with the Divinity, a mystic communion
so intimate that every distinction between God and
the soul disappears. In the whole group of Ger
man thinkers of the thirteenth century it is Eck-
hart who shows this tendency most strongly, and
it is also he who exerts the greatest influence upon
the German mind. He boldly teaches that the ex
istence of God is also the very existence of crea
tures.23 In this he differs totally with the schol
astic philosophy, which gives to each person (as
to each individual being) not only his own essence,
but an existence distinct from the existence of every
other being, and also from that of God.24 He thus
maintains a fusion of God and His creatures, since
the same single existence envelops them both. One
understands, therefore, how he can say that God is
like an infinite sphere, whose centre is everywhere

22 Edit., Krebs, pp. 129 and 133.

23 Ens tantum unum et Deus est. Extra prSmam causam nichil
est; quod enim est extra causam primam, deum scilicet, est extra esse,
quia deus est esse. Edit., Denifle, p. 549.

24 See above, pp. 195, 218.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 293

and whose circumference is nowhere,25 and that
every creature has a lasting hunger and thirst for
God: qui edunt me adhuc esuriunt. The animals,
he writes, cease to nourish their young as soon as
these have their fill; but beings are insatiable of
God, for they exist in Him.26

On the basis of this metaphysics, Eckhart elabo
rates a mysticism wherein the soul contracts a union
with God which would bridge the gulf between in
finite and finite. The description which he makes
of this mystic union makes one tremble. That
\vhich God loves in us is Himself, His very own
existence; the soul is the sanctuary of God where
He finds Himself! But God does not enter into
the sanctuary unless the soul is prepared, it must
have renounced everything, — not only all external
things, but also its very self, its knowledge, its will,
its feelings, its strivings, its personality. In short,
God enters in only if the soul is in a state of abso
lute renunciation, of complete passivity, (abge-
schiedenheit) ,27 And then the miracle takes place;
God discloses the unity and the infinity of His na
ture. The soul is transported into the silent desert
where there is neither effort, nor doubt, nor faith:
where, in order to know, there is no further need
of images, of similitudes, of interpretation, o/ writ
ing, or of dogma. God is found in me; He is not

2r. Ibid., p. 571.

26 Ibid., p. 582.

27 Edit., Pfeiffer, pp. 650 ff.

294 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

complete without my soul.28 As I am immanent in
the being of God, He accomplishes all His works
by me. God is made man in order that man may
become God. This is the mystic deification; it is
the return of man into the infinite, and with man
the return into God of all creation, the HTIOT/X)^ of
Proems.29

It is indeed difficult to clear such a doctrine of
the charge of pantheism, — however Eckhart may
protest against such interpretation of his doctrine.
But here again, as in another connection,30 we must
bear in mind that the intention of a man rests with
his conscience ; it has nothing to do with his doctrine
as expressed, — which is what it is.

Thierry of Freiburg writes against the panthe
ism of the Liber de Causis and the Elementa The-
ologica of Proems. But he shares that deductive
method a entrance, which was borrowed from Neo-
Platonism, in common with Eckhart and Ulric of
Strasburg and Witelo and the whole German
group. This leads us to a further characteristic
of the trend of thought which we are studying: the

'-'* Ibid., pp. 382, 458, passim.

29 In contrast with the above, the truth of Henry Adams' state
ment appears, when he says of the mystics of St. Victor in the
twelfth century: "The French mystics showed in their mysticism
the same French reasonableness; the sense of measure, of logic, of
science; the allegiance to form; the transparency of thought, which
the French mind has always shown on its surface like a shell of
nacre." Op. cit., p. 304.

so See above, p. 167.

IX THE MIDDLE AGES 295

philosophy of the Germans in the thirteenth cen
tury lacks the moderation and equilibrium which is
so beautiful a triumph of scholastic philosophy. In
proof of this one example will suffice. Thus, schol
astic method starts with facts, with observation of
the senses and the testimony of consciousness,
in order to discover the role of general notions
and the operation of principles or laws. It is only
after this work of analysis that it authorizes its de
duction of all reality as dependent on God.31 The
German Neo-Platonism of the thirteenth century
takes the opposite course. It does not begin with
facts. It begins with the notion of God, or even
with that of being in general, and traces out the
emanation of all, step by step. Here again Eck-
hart represents best the spirit of the group. No
person takes more delight than he in the majestic
tranquillity and impenetrable mystery of the Di
vinity; in the obscure and fathomless abyss of its
reality; in the effusion of the soul, passive and
stripped of self, in that ocean of reality. Eckhart
does not pause, as does Bonaventure, to mark the
lower stages of the journey of the soul to God; his
thought leaps to God Himself, towards the Being
which alone is of interest to him. Thus, in the
speculation of Eckhart we have the prototype of
that strain of metaphysics which hurls speculation
with dizzy speed into the abyss, without imposing
on itself the restraint of actual experience.

si Cf. Ch. IX, vii.

296 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

This lack of moderation, which affects the philo
sophical method of the Germans, affects also each
of their metaphysical, psychological, and moral doc
trines. Moreover, it is extended by Eckhart to
the facts of religious experience and the interpre
tation of dogma. His scorn for the external act,
his exaggeration of the internal aspect of religious
experience, the small place which he gives to the
authority of Scripture, — all of this prepares the
way for the Reformation, to be sure; but it
stands in great contrast with the dogmatic and
mystical and moral theology of Thomas of Aquin.

To sum up. Endowment of the personal worth
of the individual with metaphysical support; devo
tion to clear ideas and their correct expression;
moderation in doctrine and observance of a just
mean between extremes; the combination of ex
perience and deduction, — these are the characteris
tics, or, if you will, the tendencies, of the scholastic
philosophy as it was elaborated by Neo-Latins and
Anglo-Celts. But, in the Xeo-Platonic group of
German thinkers in the thirteenth century, all of
this is replaced by very different characteristics,—
fascination for monism and pantheism ; mystic com
munion of the soul with Deity ; craving for extreme
deduction; predilection for the study of Being, and
of its descending steps; aversion to clarified intel-
lectualism; delight in examples and metaphors,
which are misleading and equivocal; and above all
the want of balanced equilibrium, in exaggerating
certain aspects and doctrines regardless of all else.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

EPILOGUE

i. Influence of thirteenth-century philosophical systems on
later thought in the West. ii. Pedagogical value of scholastic
ism for the history of modern philosophy.

THE unifying ideas of the thirteenth century had
disappeared by the middle of the fourteenth cen
tury. As the European states advanced in stabil
ity, the spirit of nationalism became increasingly
diversified. The University of Paris lost its cos
mopolitan character, as a centre of learning, and
became simply a national institution. Further
more, the authority of the Popes declined in the
domain of politics. Thus, in the quickened and
complicating course of events, certain specific char
acteristics of the mediaeval civilization passed out
of existence.

But the philosophical systems of the Middle
Ages had left their imprint on the western minds,
The contrasts between the philosophers of Neo-
Latin and Anglo-Celtic extraction, on the one
hand, and the philosophers within the Germanic
group, on the other hand, survived the thirteenth

298 PHILOSOPHY AXD CIVILIZATION

century. Descartes and Locke are much more in
debted to scholasticism than is commonly sup
posed;1 and the Germans have good reason for re
garding Meister Eckhart as the first philosopher in
their line.

This takes us back, then to our point of depar
ture. For, it justifies our view of the thirteenth
century as the watershed of European genius in its
diverging flow.

If our reflections in these lectures have been cor
rect, the study of the philosophic systems of the
Middle Ages, and of scholasticism in particular,
must take on new meaning and value for all those
who prize the western mode of thought.

Even as the study of Greek and Latin classics is
an indispensable preliminary to our literary cul
ture; and as the study of antique statuary and me
diaeval architecture and the painting of the Renais
sance possesses inestimable power in forming the
minds of our future sculptors, architects, and paint
ers, and conditions the very flight of originality, —
just so the study of modern philosophy must lean
not alone upon Greek philosophy, but equally on

i For recent works on the indebtedness of later thinkers to
mediaeval thought, see, for example: E. Gilson, La libertd chez
Descartes et la theologie, Paris, 1913. E. Krakowski, Les Sources
medievales de la philosophic de Locke, Paris, 1915 — P. Ramsay, Les
doctrines medievales chez Jean Donne, le po&te-mdtaphysicien
d'Angleterre, Oxford, 1916.

299

the conceptions of the world and of life which
formed the temperaments of our very own ances
tors. We are closer to them than we are to the
Greeks; and, in the light of history, the study of
their philosophy appears as a necessary stage in our
philosophical education.2 Thus, it seems contrary to
all reason to ignore that age, as has hitherto been
done all too often. We must really "traverse
the scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages," if
we are to criticize or to go beyond it.

2 My friend and colleague, Professor Horace C. Longwell of
Princeton University, has worked out these ideas in detail, inde
pendently and some years ago; he intends to publish the paper.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY 307

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Histoire de la Philosophie scolastique dans les Pays-Bas
et la Principaute de Liege (Louvain, et Alcan, Paris,
1895). Mem. couronne par 1' Academic de Belgique,
404 p. Epuise.

* Etudes sur Henri de Gand (Louvain, et Alcan, Paris,
1895). Extrait du precedent.

*Le traite des formes de GUles de Less'mes. (Texte inedit
et etude.) 1901. xvi, 122, 108 p., gr. in-jesus, edit,
de luxe.

Introduction a la philosophic neo-scolastique. 1904. xvi,
350 pages. Epuise.

Scholasticism old and new. Translated by P. Corey,
(Dublin, 1907), 328 pages.

*Etude sur la vie, les oeuvres et ^influence de Godefroid
de Fontaines (Memoire couronne par 1'Academie de
Belgique). 1904.

*Les quatre premiers quodlibets de G. de Fontaines (en
collaborat. avec A. Pelzer). 364 pages, grand in-
jesus. Edit, de luxe.

* Histoire de la Philosophie en Belgique. (Louvain, et Al
can, Paris, 1910) xii, 378 p., 18 gravures hors texte.

* Histoire de la Philosophie medievale (Louvain, 1912).

*Les Quodlibets V-VII de Godefroid de Fontaines. (Tex-
tes inedits). En collaboration avec J. Hoffmans).
(Louvain, 1914).

*Uoeuvre d*art et la beaute; Conferences philosophiques
faites a Poitiers (Louvain, 1920).

Mediaeval Philosophy illustrated from the System of
Thomas Aquinas (Harvard University Press, 1922).

* For books so marked apply at Institut de Philosophie,
1 rue des flamands, Louvain, Belgium.

INDEX OF NAMES*

Abaelard, 1, 32, 40, 44, 48, 52, 53;

Glossulae super Porphyrium, 58,

59; apologetic method of, 162;

autobiography of, 140; and He-

loise, 35; on revelation, 164; on

universals, 58-59.
Absalon of St. Victor, 52.
Accursius, 107.
Adam of St. Victor, 35.
Adams, Henry, 35, 104, 210, 294.
Adelard of Bath, 40, 41, 47, 57,

142, 281.
Agricola, 7.

Alan of Lille, 40, 52, 142, 174.
Alberic of Rheims, 45.
Albert the Great, 1, 73, 76, 173,

282, 289.

Alcher of Clairvaux, 143.
Alexander III (Rolando Bandinel-

li), 44, 121.
Alexander of Hales, 1, 64, 73, 76,

82, 109, 130, 166, 281.
Alexander Neckham, 42.
Alfarabi, 79.
Alfred Anglicus (of Sereschel), 73,

288.

Alphandery, P., 287.
Alphonso, X, 101.
Altamira, R., 102.
Anselm of Canterbury, 1, 3, 44, 48,

52, 141, 164.
Anselm of Laon, '40, 85.
Ampere, 137.
Antolin, 41.

Antoninus of Florence, 122.
Aristotle, 2, 11, 97 sq., 128, 141,

153 sq., 181, 212, 279, de Anima,
78; Metaphysics, 78, 139; Or-
ganon, 45, 47, 70; Physics, 78;
Politics, 219 sq., 248, 250, 255;
actuality and potentiality, 200
sq., astronomy, 112; and city
state, 226 sq., definition of good,
223, divisions of philosophy, in,
91; on slavery, 278; on state and
society, 226 sqq., substance, 196.

Augustine (St.), 11, 141, 250, 277;
De Civitate Dei, 115, sq., 126;
Confessions, 140; on society, 226.

Augustus, 127.

Averroes, 79, 84, 139, 277, 287.

Avicebron, 79, 195.

Avicenna, 79, 174, 277.

Bacon, Francis, 3.

Bacon, Roger, 1, 64, 73, 77, 83, 129 ;
Opus Majus, 139; apologetics
of, 164, 283; astrology of, 113;
and Averroism, 284, character of,
78, and natural science, 283.

Baker, E., 104.

Baiimker's-Beitrage, 58, 128, 184,
189, 221, 282, 291.

Baldus, 231.

Bandinelli Rolando, see Alexander
III.

Barker, E., 236.

Bartholomeus Anglicus, 106.

Baur, L., 96, 128.

Baumgartner, M., 150.

Bede the Venerable, 141.

Benedict (St.), 24 sq., 147.

* I want to express my thanks to my pupil, Mr. J. L. Zimmerman,
who made this index.

INDEX OF NAMES

309

Bernard of Auvergne, 74.
Bernard of Chartres, 45.
Bernard (St.), 31, 35.
Berthold of Mosburg, 289 sq.
Binder, 155.
Boethius, 57, 78, 99.
Boethius the Dacian, 73.
Bonaventure, 1, 64, 73, 82 sq., 109,

129 sq., 281, 295.
Bourget, Paul, 231.
Bradwardine, Thomas, 174.

Brehier, L., 49.
Brunetiere, 176.
Brunschvigg, 140.
Buridan, John, 186.
Burleigh, Walter, 73.
Busse, 155.

Caesar of Heisterbach, 156.

Can Grande della Scala, 158.

Carlyle, A.J., 56, 262.

Catherine of Pisa, 154.

Cavalcante, Guido, 174.

Chambon, F., 161.

Charlemagne, 22, 117, 119, 121 sq.

Chatelain (see Denifle-Chatelain).

Chaucer, 37, 174.

Cicero, 47, 146.

Clerval, 47.

Comte, Auguste, 98, 127.

Constantine of Carthage, 44.

Dante, 114, 121 sq.; Divine Comedy,
9, 105 sq., 137, 166, 175, 190;
Epistolae, 158; Inferno, 94;
Paradiso, 190; de Monarchia, 115
sqq., 129, 146, 174, 226 sq., 231,
241; on Aristotle, 97; on beauty.
94; and Can Grande della Scala,
15S; on the divisions of philoso
phy, 199; on peace, 119; principle
of parsimony in, 110; theory of
the state of, 115 sqq., 226, 231,
247; on tyranny, 247; on war,
327

d'Andeli, Henri, 174.

Denifle, 65, 161, 182, 290 sq.

Denifle-Chatelain, 67, 169, 286.

de Meung, Jean, 190.

De Poorter, A., 221.

Descartes, 11, 154, 198, 298.

Dionysius the Areopagite, 77.

Dominic, (St.), 74

Donatus, 46, 93.

Hover, Richard, '42.

Duhem, P., 113.

Duns Scotus, 1, 73, 82 sq., 109 sq.,
129 sq., 144, 281, 284. Grammati-
ca Speculativa, 93; on freedom,
184; the good and martyrdom,
185; intuition in, 183; on philos
ophy and theology, 164; principle
of parsimony in, 110; avoids psy
chological determinism, 186.

Dyroff, A., 290.

Eckhart (Meister), 182, 289 sqq.;

292 sqq. ; 295 sqq.
Edward I, 100, 102, 107, 157.
Eleanor of Aquitaine, 20.
Endres, J. A., 221
Engelbert of Volkersdorf, 238.
Etienne of Tournai, 33.
Euclid, 47, 146.

F£nelon, 8.

Ferdinand III, 100, 102.

Ferdinand of Castile, 157.

Fra Angelico, 76.

Francis (St.), 9, 11, 64, 74 sq., 137.

Frederic Barbarossa, 103, 121.

Frederic II, 100, 103, 122, 157, 287.

Fulbert, 45.

Gauthier of Bruges, 73.

Gauthier of Mortagne, 45.

Gerard of Abbeville, 281.

Gerbert, 48.

Geyer, B., 58 sq.

Gierke, O. (von) 120, 230 sq., 238,

249.
Gilbert de la Porree, 32, 41, 52 sq.,

58 sq., 175, 182.
Gilbert of Tournai, 221.
Gilles of Lessines, 113.
Gilles of Rome, 73, 221.

310

INDEX OF NAMES

Gillet, 84.

Gilson, E., 298.

Giotto, 158.

Giuliani, G., 158.

Godfrey of Fontaines, 71 sqq., 96,

186, 281.
Goethe, 8 sq.
Gozzoli, 84.
Grabmann, M., 49, 51, 58, 79, 128,

163, 189, 220.
Gratian, 107, 222.
Gregory VII (Hildebrand) 16, 29,

121, 123.
Grosseteste, Robert, 74, 129, 151,

289.

Gui of Hainaut, Count, 129.
Gundissalinus, Dominicus, 96, 128,

143, 151.

Harrison, F., 101.

Haskins, C. H., 42, 79.

HeJoise, 35.

Henry II, 20 sq., 132.

Henry IV, 29 sq., 121.

Henry Bate of Malines, 129.

Henry of Ghent, 73, 86, 130, 144,

152', 165 sq., 168, 281.
Herrad of Landsberg, 49.
Hobbes, 3.
Horace, 47.
Hugh of Cluny, 30.
Hugh II, of Lusignan, 220.
Hugh of Noyers, 32.
Hugo of St." Victor, 1, 40, 49, 52

sq., 127, 151, 162.
Hume, 136.
Huxley, 203.

Innocent III, 33, 44, 103, 121 sqq.
Innocent IV, 114, 119, 230.
Irnerius of Bologna, 47, 231.
Isaac of Stella, 42.
Isidore of Seville, 90, 141.

Jacopo de Voragine, 106.
James I (of Aragon) 107.
James of Viterbo, 73.
Janet, P., 125.

Johannes Andreae, 119 sq.
John of La Rochelle, 74.
John of Salisbury, 1, '42, 48, 52,

141, 237, 263; Metalogicus, 57;

Polycraticus 59 sq., 219, 238, 248;

state compared to human body,

in, 239 ; on tyrannicide, 239.
John Scotus Eriugena, 1, 50.

Kant, 154.

Kilwardby, Robert, 73, 128.

Krakowski, 298.

Krebs, E., 292.

Lackland, John, 101, 249.

Lamprecht, 30, 37.

La n franc, 44.

Langlois, 72.

Leibnitz, 11, 202, 208, 210.

Lippi, Filippino, 84.

Little, A. G., 79.

Locke, 199, 298.

Louis VII, 20, 122, 132.

Louis IX, 35, 100 sqq., 221, 259.

Louis XIV, 127.

Luchaire, A., 20 sq., 33, 101, 157,

260.
Lully, Raymond, 64, 73, 130, 164.

Maitland, F. W., 120.

Male, E., 49, 132, 173, 191 sq.

Mandonnet, P., 79, 284, 287.

Manegold of Lautenbach, 219, 262.

Map, Walter, 42.

Marchesi, 79.

Marius Victorinus, 47.

Marvin, F. S., 237.

Mathew of Lorraine, 32.

Maurice of Sully, 33.

Mendenez y Pelayo, 79.

Mentellini/106.

Mercier, D., 181, 266.

Michael Scot, 73, 128.

Michael of Corbeil, 51.

Migne, 26.

Mill, John Stuart, 150.

Minges, P., 184.

Montesquieu, 8.

INDEX OF NAMES

311

Newton, 214.

Nicholas of Autrecourt, 136.
Nicholas of Oresmes, 113.
Nizolius, 7.

Odon of Tournai, 45.

Otloh of St. Emmeram, 43, 51.

Otto I, 29.

Otto III, 43.

Otto of Freising, 43.

Pascal, 140.

Peckham, John, 77.

Pelzer, A., 79, 110, 143.

Peter Damien, 51 sq.

Peter Lombard, 44, 52 sq.

Peter of Blois, 42, 51.

Peter of Capua, 44.

Peter of Corbeil, 33.

Peter of Poitiers, 163.

Peter of Spain, 73.

Peter of Tarantaise, 73.

Peter the Venerable, 26, 55, 58.

Petrus Petri, 147.

Pfeiffer, F., 290, 293.

Philip Augustus, 64, 100 sq., 107,

125, 132, 157.
Philip the Fair, 21.
Philo, 162.
Plato, 2, 11, 97 sq., 118, 141, 154,

210, 277, 279.
Plutarch, 238.
Poppo of Stavelot, 24.
Porphyry, 58.
Porter, A. K., 49.
Praepositinus of Cremona, 4'4.
Priscian, 47, 93.
Proclus, 78, 288, 290, 294.
Ptolemy of Lucques, 243, 249.

Quintilian, 47.

Rabelais, 155.
Radulfus Ardens, 127.
Ramsay, P., 298.
Rashdall, H., 65.
Raymond of Toledo, 81.
Remi of Auxerre, 47.

Reynaud, 24.
Rhabanus Maurus, 90.
Richard of Middleton, 73.
Richard of St. Victor, 40, 42.
Ilivalta, Ercole, 174.
Robert of Sorbonne, 161.
Rocquain, 123 sq., 126.
Rose, 79.
Rudolph of Habsburg, 157.

Sandys, 42.

Savigny, 229.

Saintsbury, 37, 176.

Schneider, 282.

Seneca, 47.

Shakespeare, 176 sq.

Siger of Brabant, 1, 73, 129, 284,

387.

Siger of Courtrai, 93, 281.
Simon of Bucy, 72.
Simon of Montfort, 157.
Spencer, Herbert, 98, 127.
Stadler, H. J., 282.
Steinhausen, 37, 43.
Stephen Langton, 73.
Stephen of Tournai, 51.

Taine, 97, 198.

Taylor, H. O., 171, 173.

Tennyson, 239.

Theodoric of Chartres, 41.

Thierry of Chartres, 45, 48.

Thierry of Freiburg, 1, 73, 289, sqq.,
294.

Thomas Aquinas (St.), 1, 3, 64,
73, 81 sqq., 109, 114, 130, 144 sq.,
155, 195, 210, 241, 255, 260, 271,
sqq., 277, 281, 284, and passim.
De Anima, 187, 266; De Coelo,
113; Contra Gentiles, 86, 110, 143,
166, 255; Ethica Nichom., 94,
193, 325, 233, 244 sq.; Metaphys-
ica, 91, 139; Perihermeneias 182;
In Politic, comm., 248, 255; de Re-
gimine Principum, 220, 226 sq.,
243 sqq., 247, 249, 251, 253; de
unitate intellectus, 140, de veri-
tate, 217; aesthetics of, 187 sq.,

312

INDEX OF NAMES

artes liberates and artes mechan-
icae, 95; astronomy, 112 sq., 268;
on authority, 142; and Meister
Eckhart, 296; epistemology, 182
sqq., ethics, 93 sq., on eternity of
the world, 169; God, 215 sqq.,
law in, 129, 235, 247 sqq., 242,
270 sq., and Leibnitz, 202; logic,
93; and Monte Cassino, 44; on
music, 168; on order, 193; po
litical philosophy, 93, 241 sqq.,
theory of progress, 265 sqq., 270
sq., psychology, 187 sq., and
science, 86, 96, 187, social philoso
phy, 220 sqq., on sovereignty, 243,
248, 253; on the soul, 211; on
substance, 204; theology and
philosophy, 95, 152 sq., on war,
261; divisions of philosophy, 91;
theory of justice, 246 sqq., on
tyrannicide, 248.

Thorburn, W. M., 110.

Traini, 84, 154, 286.

Trajan, 238.

Tribbechovius, 155.

Ueberweg-Baumgartner, 150, 291.
Ulric of Strasburg, 73, 289 sq., 294.
Urban, II, 28.

Vacandart, 32.

Vacant, 79.

Vincent of Beauvais, 74, 90, 10(5.

Virgil, 47, 190.

Vives, I,., 7.

Walter of Mortagne, 57.
Walter of St. Victor, 52.
William of Aquitaine, 24.
William of Auvergne, 64, 74, 82,

143, 281.

William of Auxerre, 74.
William of Champeaux, 40 sq., 45,

65.

William of Conches, 41.
William of Meliton, 73.
William of Mende, 106, 158, 190.
William of Moerbeke, 219, 250,

289.
William of Occam, 1, 3, 73, 110,

281.

William of St. Amour, 74.
William the Conqueror, 21.
Witelo, 74, 289 sq., 294.
Wolff, 91.
Wiistenfeld, F., 79.

Ximines, Rodriguez (Cardinal), 73,
81.

Zeiller, 260.
Zurbaran, 84.

721
.W96

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